The Abyss of Observation Alone

"You should have answered," the sniper says to the correspondent. "You could have saved one."

There is a story I heard once about the press in Bosnia. I tried to verify it numerous times with people who might know, but I never succeeded. (Possibly I will with this post.) My informants always told me they knew of things like it that had happened in the former Yugoslavia.

Let’s say then that it is not a true story, but a fiction about a journalist set in Sarajevo sometime between April 2, 1992, when the Siege of Sarajevo began, and February 29, 1996, when it was declared over.

During the siege a correspondent from a Western news agency is contacted by an intermediary, someone he knows, who has an offer: to go out one night with Bosnian Serb snipers and see for yourself what they do.

A deal is struck, and he accompanies the men to one of their perches in the hills above the city, where they train their rifles on civilians, who might be trying to cross the street. This is where the siege “happens,” in a sense. This is the action itself.

“Come here,” says one of the men, after he has located a target. The sniper motions to take a look. The reporter, who in his own mind had come to see, leans over and peers for a second or two through the lens of the rifle.

He sees two people who think they are out of range standing in an alley, completely vulnerable. That is when the sniper, retaking the lens, says: which one, left or right?

This alarms the reporter. “I have no answer to that,” he says. “I didn’t come to be involved in what you do.” The sniper throws back his head to laugh, and returns to his rifle. There is a pause. In two quick bursts he kills both people just seen through the lens.

“You should have answered,” the sniper says to the Western correspondent. “You could have saved one.”

That’s the story I heard. As I said, I don’t know if it ever happened, or if it did, whether it happened that way. Maybe it’s a story told about journalists in every war, and only the details change. What I do know is that, treated as parable (not a truthful account of what went on in the hills above Sarajevo one night, but a fiction invented from shards of fact) this story, which I have not been able to verify or forget, is about something very real and alive today.

It is the problem of publicizing evil, and of when you become a part of things by observing them.

The reporter went “only” to observe. But the sniper changed the observer into a culpable person, a participant in the criminal siege of the city from above. This was done against the journalist’s will, and so a kind of mind rape goes on within the prism of the story.

Back home, in a moral zone he can recognize, the reporter can always say: “the sniper intended to kill both of them anyway, so I had no role…” but in fact a truthful correspondent will always know that the man may well have been speaking truthfully when he said, “you could have saved one.” Those who have the power to kill, arbitrarily, can also let live on a whim, an act which equally enhances their power.

Show me what you do is the clearly implied contract for the climb into the mountains with the snipers. (And they delivered on their end.) That explains what the reporter thought he was doing: witnessing a terrible reality that nonetheless should be told to the civilized world. Sniping against civilians is a war crime, and he will be a witness to how it happens.

And of course criminal gangs and killing squads everywhere have their ways of making newcomers and by-standers into instant accomplices, because when everyone around is spread with guilt that lessens the guilt of each one. This too may explain why the reporter was brought there.

Finally, there is the moment where he peers into the lens. The abyss of observation. But the fatal step into moral involvement has the appearance of a further form of inquiry: come see what I see.

Should we turn our eyes from what bad men with guns do? Refuse to see as they see? In one of the great works of Sixties Journalism, Michael Herr’s Dispatches, which is about a reporter trying to think clearly in Vietnam, there is a passage specifically about this:

Talk about impersonating an identity, about locking into a role, about irony: I went to cover the war and the war covered me; an old story, unless of course you’ve never heard it. I went there behind the crude but serious belief that you had to be able to look at anything, serious because I acted on it and went, crude because I didn’t know, it took the war to teach it, that you were as responsible for everything you saw as you were for everything you did.

“You had to be able to look at anything.” This is the kind of reasoning on trial in my fable.

“Don’t look into the face of evil, you may be changed by it.” As far as I know, correspondents don’t have any kind of rule like that.

When I have told the story to people a first reaction is usuallly, “That was a crazy thing to do. He should never have agreed to go.” But what grounds would a professional news person have for dismissing the opportunity to see how the criminal snipers above Sarajevo operate? It’s part of the siege, often called the longest in the twentieth century, and the siege is responsible for the reporter’s presence in Bosnia to begin with. How can the snipers not be a part of the story?

To me it is plausible to imagine a Western journalist “going out,” because there are no clear grounds for not going. There are clear grounds for not taking bribes, for not making up quotes. But not for this.

Nor would the fruits of “snipers at work”—video footage, for example—be shunned by the global marketplace for news and documentary. On the contrary, a value would instantly be placed on it and once the uplink is made the video would start moving (and publicizing evil.)

Which might be exactly what a faction among the Bosnian Serb forces wanted.

There would be many reasons to go, if journalism alone, or let’s say professionalism in news, is permitted to supply the values. And if the marketplace does it, no problem. One goes, gets video of the snipers, gets a story, gets paid.

I believe there are hidden moral hazards in the ethic of neutral observation and the belief in a professional “role” that transcends other loyalties. I think there is an abyss to observation alone. And I feel it has something to do with why more people don’t trust journalists. They don’t trust that abyss.

These are themes playing through a disturbing and penetrating article I missed the first time, and recently came across by Robert D. Kaplan, who writes for the Atlantic Monthly. He is the author of Balkan Ghosts, a book with its own controversies. The article was first published in the Atlantic (Nov. 2004), but here appears in the Hoover Institute’s Policy Review Online: The Media and Medievalism.

Among the many ideas he develops is that CNN’s identity is “cosmopolitan,” and this explains its clash with Fox— more fully than categories like liberal and conservative.

Still, CNN—-and in particular, CNN International-—cannot be defined simply as a left-wing network. Look at the latter’s exotic female anchors, so chic and exquisitely made-up. Rosa Luxemburg never looked like that. CNN International is a global cosmopolitan network, just as Fox News is an old-fashioned nation-state network gaudied up by the latest technology (and because the meatloaf world of the old nation-state will remain feisty for a few decades yet, Fox has hit a gold mine2).

By a “global cosmopolitan network” Kaplan means an inchoate ideology at CNN giving a trans-national identity to the news workers the network employs, who come from 50 different countries. Sort of like a clerisy, which is a parallel he develops. Their global professionalism can correct for all the biases of the individual nation states, or so it is felt among believers in the ideology.

We find something like this in the words of Eason Jordan, who recently resigned as CNN’s Chief News Executive and Senior Statesman. In a 2002 interview he described the kind of cosmopolitan ideal that Kaplan treats as a darker force: the ideology of the stateless media professional.

Jordan is asked: “How does CNN see itself or ‘brand’ itself—- are you an American network, or do you see yourselves as regionalized or international?”

We certainly tailor our programming for the marketplace; most of CNN’s consumers live outside the United States. A great deal of our programming originates from outside the United States. Many of our journalists come from outside the United States. The reality is that we are a US-based news channel, but that doesn’t mean we’re American in perspective with our international service. In fact the person who oversees all our international outlets is not an American at all, he’s British, and we hired him from the BBC several years ago.

When Jordan says with confidence “we’re not American in our perspective,” he means that CNN has transcended its roots in the system of nation states, and now stands in a sense “above” that system. Having said what the network’s perspective isn’t (it isn’t American), he has no intention of describing what it is. Kaplan calls this “a new realm of authority akin to the emergence of a superpower.”

In a way it’s the view from the sky box. I have also called it the view from nowhere. But instead of floating above the two political parties in the United States, above “left” and “right,” CNN International floats above the nations themselves. Kaplan thinks this is dangerous. He might have examined what Eason Jordan said in ‘02:

There are more than fifty nationalities of journalists who work at CNN International producing that service. If we were to move CNN’s base to Egypt maybe they’d say we’re Egyptian—you have to be based somewhere. It’s the people who produce the channel and the people who provide the reporting who are really responsible for it, and those are people from all over the world, the very best journalists and program makers we can find. No matter what CNN International does, as long as CNN’s headquarters is in the United States people are going to say, well, it’s an American service. But the reality is that it’s an international service based in the United States, and we don’t make any apologies about that.

“It’s an international service” is what worries Kaplan. He argues that the “new realm of authority,” which is media authority, works through the device of exposure, an idea he revives from Samuel Huntington’s work in the 1980s. “As secrecy became synonymous with evil in the late 1960s, exposure was elevated from a mere technique to a principle,” he writes.

Exposure is the particular terrain of the investigative journalist. It is the investigative journalist who has inherited the mantle of the old left, whatever the ideological proclivities of individual practitioners of the trade. The investigative journalist is never interested in the 90 per cent of activities that are going right, nor especially in the 10 per cent that are going wrong, but only in the 1 per cent that are morally reprehensible. Because he always seems to define even the most heroic institutions by their worst iniquities, his target is authority itself.

Kaplan thinks “politicians are weaker than ever; journalists, stronger,” one generalization of his that does not apppy at all to Washington under George W. Bush. He makes a lot of the fact that “journalists are not bureaucratically accountable for their views.”

He adds a key observation about unearned virtue when he says of journalists: “transcending politics is easier done than engaging in them, with the unsatisfactory moral compromises that are entailed.” He thinks the news tribe has become less moral but more moralistic. He says it is anti-heroic because, like the old Communist movement, it is less invested in the nation state:

During World War II American soldiers and journalists belonged to the same crowd-pack, so news coverage was more empathetic. It made heroes of American troops when the facts so demanded, which was often. American troops have changed less than American journalists have.

If that’s true it could help explain (along with other narratives Kaplan does not mention) why trust in the news media seems to have eroded so much lately, and why “their credibility is under assault as never before,” as Howard Kurtz put it recently.

Kaplan’s essay veers at times into an anti-Sixities rant, and seems to have been written about an era of centralized media power that is in many ways ending. It has other defects and I am not endorsing it all when I say: read what Kaplan wrote and argue with it. It sounds nothing like most press commentary of the day. But it sounds a lot like my fable.

Michael Herr, who like the late Hunter Thompson is a Sixties figure, said something in the part I quoted from him that crashes the ethical system of mainstream journalism, turning it upside down: You were as responsible for everything you saw as you were for everything you did. It was a lesson he learned from covering Vietnam.

That’s not the way most journalists think; they say pretty much the opposite. For example: We’re not responsible for what we saw in campaign 2004, only for what we did in reporting it. That’s common sense in the profession. Herr contradicts it. So, in a way, does my fable.

To wrap up, I give you Michael Getler in his current column for the Washington Post:

The ombudsman’s perch is an interesting spot from which to watch all this angst unfold. The attacks on the mainstream media, and the attempts to undermine them, are indeed escalating. More and more e-mails have a nasty, threatening, ideological tone.

From their perch, the ombudsmen of America all report this escalation, but they do not report much progress in the hunt for ideas that would explain it. I suggest that, when there is a moment, they look into the abyss of observation alone.

For an in-depth and detailed review of events see The Siege of Sarajevo, 1992-1995, by U.S. Army Major Curtis S. King, part of a casebook on urban warfare.

The urban area contained virtually all of the types of terrain and structures that are found in most modern cities. However, the truly dominant characteristic of the city was the ring of mountains surrounding it, placing the city in a bowl visible and vulnerable to anyone who occupied the rim of high ground on the outside edges.

I’ve always admired the dour, big-sweeping, heavily book-literate international correspondetry from The Atlantic’s Robert “don’t forget my middle initial” Kaplan, author of such influential bummers as Balkan Ghosts. Lately, he’s been turning his unhappy attentions to the media, writing at least one interesting column that pointed out the great class divide separating American journalists and soldiers.

But this Policy Review media-bash, linked favorably by Andrew Sullivan and others, is a festival of absolutist hyperbole, historical overstretch, and flat-wrong analysis.

Welch notes that Kaplan makes many dumb overstatements. I agree with that.

Andrew Cline at Rhetorica: “A question occurred to me yesterday while reading a book called Taking Journalism Seriously—a brief, recent history of interdisciplinary academic research in journalism. I found myself wondering if journalism has become absurd.”

I have no idea if it's intentional on your part, but there's a very Talmudic flavor to the question of observation and responsibility, and there's also quite a parallel between what you note about war criminals having an investment in involving reporters, and reporters having an investment in involving their audience. What would you say to the notion that at least some investigative reporters, the ones Kaplan describes as fueled by moral outrage, are intent on bringing their audiences into that circle of guilt, but with the opposite intention? that is, imposing guilt on the audience as a means of breaking a silence instead of sealing it?

You may be aware that a similar story involving a journalist and a sniper appeared in V Schlondorff's movie "False Witness", set in Beirut in 1981.
In the movie, I think the journalist says "Stop that immediately" to the sniper who lowers his weapon and does not shoot. Thats my recollection anyway.

You start out with a pretty good discussion of journalistic ethics(that might have lead to a discussion of ethical pitfalls of blogging -- although traditional journalists have an ethical basis for not intervening in "evil", bloggers do not. How will bloggers respond when they observe someone on "their side" doing something wrong? Of course, at least with the right-wing, the answer is already revealed; they will ignore it, excuse it, or cover it up. The left, on the other hand, definitely holds their own accountable. Witness the reaction to Zephyr Teachout's (about as "progressive" a person as you will find) smear of Kos from the "liberal" community. )

We then seque into an entirely relevant discussion of Michael Herr's reporting --- Herr's experience in Vietnam gives him an entirely different perspective.

But then we veer off into an examination of some tract generated by someone affiliated with a far-right wing "think tank", the Hoover Institute. (You know you are in wingnut land any time the name "Richard M. Scaife" shows up on the list of members of the "Executive Committee".) Unfortunately, Jay doesn't bother to clue us into the fact that the author is writing to advance the wingnut agenda---its not until the very end of his discussion of Kaplan that he notes that "Kaplan's essay veers at times into an anti-Sixities [sic] rant", which is really what his essay was all about.

In essence, Kaplan's essay is an apology for absolute chauvinism in media. When an author starts from the assumption that there is something inherently wrong with journalism from an "internationalist" perspective, why bother taking his criticism of the media seriously? Kaplan obviously thinks that the function of journalism is to disseminate state propaganda, rather than provide readers with an objective view of a given situation.

Which raises the question, why is Jay Rosen treating this wingnut mouthpiece as if he was credible to begin with? It does appear that Jay himself is promoting a chauvinist media --- he presents no alternative explanations, yet cites the utterly compromised Howard Kurtz (I mean, look at who Kurtz is married to, then explain what the hell he is doing pretending to be an unbiased media critic.) No doubt Kurtz gets mentioned because he is part of Rosen's inner circle of "bloggerati".

Michael Herr has established that one of the central premises cited by Rosen here, that "American troops have changed less than American journalists have" is utter nonsense. The issue is not changes in troops or journalists, its changes in American foreign policy (from a semi-isolationist state to a nation intent upon establishing global hegemony) that resulted in "changes" in journalism. This change in the thrust of US foreign policy demanded a change in the perspective of journalism from "chauvinist" (an isolationist foreign policy justifies to a very large extent state-centric coverage of foreign affairs) to "internationalist" (when a nation starts throwing its weight around the rest of the world, journalists have a clear responsibility to ensure that the citizens of that nation are fully informed about how that nation's actions are being perceived.)

Jay wraps up with a quote from the Washington Post's ombudsman that does not seem to bear any relationship at all with the rest of the piece. The only reason I can come up with for its inclusion is "blogrolling"---if Rosen mentions Getler, there's a good chance that Getler will mention Rosen in print very soon, increasing Jay's visibility and the marketability of his efforts (like his forthcoming book....)

Let me provide a different perspective, as a young, educated, and newly conservative weblog reader:

We should look for simple, working explanations whenever possible. As an engineer I am wary of people performing "intellectual onanism" instead of looking for the simplest working solution. As a musician I am sympathetic to your expressive needs. However, they may be getting in the way of your problem solving skills in this case. Let me advocate a simpler view of the media situation.

In law, we have an adversarial system. We all agree it is better at exposing the facts then having one or more "disinterested, obejctive" judges. We all know what sort of garbage that evolves into almost immediately. In science, advances are made in an extremely competitve atmosphere, with experts unabashedly dividing into hotly contesting camps over competing theories, working to advance their pet theory for sometimes decades until massive evidence finally appears (examples: ice age geological cycle, ongoing back-and-forths in anthropological history, current debate on climate). Scientists are not "objective" in their emotional attachment to theories, only in their evidence standards, and some scientists do go to their graves refusing to admit they were wrong. In technology nothing is clearer than the relationship of competition to advancement - look at competing microchip architectures. Those architectures that are bought into on a large scale have more money and effort put into improving them, and with intense competition they will improve as fast as possible. Superior technologies that fail to attract buy-in will stagnate -- but superior and successful technologies also tend to stagnate in the absence of competition.

So has it occured to the intellectual jerk-off community that competition might be the key, and only relevant, issue to the changes in the journalistic world? Instead of looking at the amorphous cultural / political / identity politics of this or that part of journalistic culture, it makes more sense to say: media stagnated from lack of competition for about 30-40 years. That pattern is being reversed.

Let's try some problem solving: look at an ACTUAL broken aspect if the system: the contemporary journalistic wisdom has been wrong lately on many important issues, such as, oh, let's say or likelihood of success in Afghanistan and then Iraq. Instead of grandstanding about motivations and identities, let's be simple about things. In the last election, Bush won by nearly exactly the margin predicted by the major polls leading up to the election. The main stream media all decided to believe in exit poll results that they should not have believed in, leading them to be surprised when Bush won exactly as expected. Many web columnists, whose arguments I trusted, were so certain of the falseness of those early exit poll results that they were offering BETS to the mainstream media!

Well, I thought: HELL THATS A GOOD MODEL. So I looked on tradesports.com, saw that Bush-Win contracts had fallen from 66 (accurate market reaction to the real polls) to 33, and I jumped in and bought a bunch of contracts. When Bush won the contracts expired at 100, and so I made a 200% profit. This is the sort of event that changed my perspective on journalistic fact-finding, and I BET it would work for the electorate at large as well.

I think this is the model: In the long run, americans are tired of media that are always freaking wrong, and we would like people to put their money where there smug liberal mouths are. Mark Steyn has many times bet his continued pundit career on the out come of a prediction. Since the beginning of the War on Terror, he has not been wrong. While not every journalist can be Mark Steyn, he is onto something. He makes every prediction as if his career would be decided by the objective outcome of his predictions. I think it has focused his mind.

Eventually I think it will be common for most news-watchers to bet on the outcomes of media predictions. This will naturally create an economy where every pundit and organization has a constantly evolving scorecard. This will turn the hidden media reality (NY Times predicted failure in recontructing Germany, sympathized wtih Stalin, coverd up forced famine in Ukraine...) into the common, everyday media reality in a natural and surprisingly abrupt way.

And i will be willing to BET, that this level of natural accountability for being wrong will become the resolution to the problem of a post-nationalist but primarily post-modern media that does not respect facts. Because, finally, careers will ride on it.

It is the problem of evil, and of when you become a part of things by observing them.

I agree, but I'd take it a step further. In your "parable", when the journalist knowingly goes out of his way to witness a war-crime, without lifting a finger to prevent it, he becomes an accomplice to that war-crime and should stand at tribunal right beside the sniper who pulled the trigger.

Jay’s story of the journalist and the sniper describes a failure of imagination on the part of the sniper, obviously; and less obviously but no less lethally on the part of the journalist.

An abyss, Jay says. Yes, a void in the brain and heart where imagination should reign. I am talking about moral imagination, the acts of empathy and sympathy, the higher reasons we read novels or go to plays, which is to feel for a few fleeting moments what it’s like to live inside another’s skin.

“A refusal to see men and women as dreams and dots,” is what Walt Whitman asked for in journalism. How about that as a masthead motto?

Journalism lost a lot when it severed its connection to literature. Individual journalists lost a lot when they bought into the idea that their highest powers as people lay in their becoming mere conduits fashioned to channel streams of holy facts from the complex world to simple-minded readers.

There certainly were good grounds for the journalist in Jay’s story to decline to travel with the sniper. They just were not journalistic grounds, which is journalism’s problem.

The journalist in Jay’s story is a moral nullity. He had no concept that to see is to do. That seeing is in itself active not passive and binds one inevitably into the web of human interconnection and responsibility. “It took the war to teach it,” wrote Michael Herr, “that you were as responsible for what you saw as you were for everything you did.”

Plenty of journalists – Hemingway, Herr, Hedges, etc. -- have learned this as individuals. It inevitably makes it difficult for them to continue doing their journalism in the same old way. Often they forsake journalism for literature to get down the full story – the full truth of the story – as they see it.

There is another way, which is for journalism to open more to literary style and conventions. This gets us into the tangled matter of literary journalism which far from being an exhausted topic has hardly had its surface scratched.

Journalists need to write more from their imagination, conscience, and responsibility; but readers have to learn how to read this way as well. At the moment this all falls on deaf ears in American newsrooms and living rooms.

But perhaps not on the Internet. Perhaps not on blogs. Perhaps not in the new forms of journalism now being created.

Because blogs are written mostly by freelancers as opposed to company men and women, it’s possible they are a place where conscience and imagination can make a stand.

I'm 90% certain that there was a controversial instance of a reporter looking through a sniper's rifle down in Sarajevo ... can't remember if it happened exactly like that.

As for Kaplan's essay, I criticized some aspects of it a couple months back. Basically, he ascribes to the media powers it does not have, lets his revulsion of consumer culture get the best of his analysis, and makes several absolutist statements that his own personal experience contradicts. And yet he's interesting, as always (at least to me).

Mark Siegel: "The media stagnated from lack of competition for about 30-40 years. That pattern is being reversed." Agreed. Is everything else not worth talking about, the province of... ah, I have the phrase right here... "the intellectual jerk-off community?" Is that what a young, educated, and newly conservative man sounds like?

I like your idea of a reputation system for journalists based on their success in making predictions. It has potential. So might other ideas for how to create a reputation system for journalists as "sellers" of news, views, reports and assessments.

That's very interesting what you say about Steyn putting his career (reputation) on the line that way-- making predictions.

> an offer: to go out one night with Bosnian Serb snipers and see for yourself what they do.

A reporter-voyeur is a voyeur, not a reporter.

In the end, nothing is "news" but what is useful. Nothing is "useful" but what civilizes. And what "civilizes" isn't abdication of understanding what civilizes.

That doesn't leave you blind to understanding others. Seneca (50 A.D.) always read the opposition -- either to learn to do something better or to learn to defend against something. But one can learn about others short of participating in their violence.

It's an interesting story, but what if the Sniper had decided not to kill either of the people because the journalist wouldn't choose? The journalist cannot know ahead of time the result of his actions. He can do one of these things:

1) Make no choice which could result in 0-2 deaths
2) Choose one which could result in 0-2 deaths
3) Choose both which would result in 0-2 deaths

Ultimately the Sniper pulls the trigger; he's made the choice to kill, and his decision is what kills them. The journalist is in no position to affect the outcome of the situation short of grabbing the gun and shooting the sniper, or shooting the two people himself.

Having said that, his ability to act as an observer, to catalog what this sniper did does provide him an ability to affect the bigger picture. He can share that story, talk about how coldly calculating and inhuman this sniper was. He can talk about how tragic it was to see these innocents being gunned down. In that, perhaps he can help bring actions that end the opportunity for these snipers to do this.

On the PressThink home page it says, "We need to keep the press from being absorbed into The Media." That means keeping the conscience from being absorbed by The Machine.

William Hazlitt has a couple of apropos quotes.

He says: "We have been so used to count by millions of late, that we think the units that compose them nothing; and are so prone to trace remote principles, that we neglect the immediate results."

Hazlitt also echoes Stephen Waters' comment above: "The boundary of our sympathy is a circle which enlarges according to its propulsion from the center – the heart. If we are imbued with a deep sense of individual weal or woe, we shall be awe-struck at the idea of humanity in general."

"the intellectual jerk-off community?"
...
" Is that what a young, educated, and newly conservative man sounds like?"

Frankly, yes. There is a difference between people who have a natural distaste for un-testable theories and un-representative models, and those who don't. Analyzing the hypothetical feelings of a journalist in the above fable is interesting in a literary or narrative sense, but not in an investigative sense, right?

"I like your idea of a reputation system for journalists based on their success in making predictions. It has potential. So might other ideas for how to create a reputation system for journalists as "sellers" of news, views, reports and assessments."

So now we are talking about an area where there has been a lot of experimentation and research done -distributed trust matrixes, communities and webs of trust. The challenge of distributing and rating software created by any source on the internet has caused the software community a great deal of consternation. The same challenge is faced on large-scale weblog systems like Slashdot.org, in terms of allowing users to rate the value of other user's comments.

In other words, this is now an engineering question versus a social sciences blab fest. I am proposing that by "creating a market" on the outcome of predictions (I know, the Conservative's answer to everything...), you force the rational behavior to the desired goal (accuracy), and everything will flow from there.

Seeing how you are a successful and well-recognized academic in the relevant field, perhaps you'd be interested in lobbying NYU or your peers to fund an experiment in this area?

One example is the CIA threat-matrix assessment stock market program that was canned for political reasons ("You want to bet on where terrorists will attack?!"), but that was understood to hold huge promise for sifting the relevant details from the sea of noise in intelligence gathering. Other examples include tradesports.com for use in predicting election and sports results, etc.

As to Mark Steyn's predictions, diligent google work shows that columns are kept in pay-only holes after a week (no long tail there, right?), but may I suggest you email Mark Steyn about his predictions and offeres to quit on failure directly? I imagine he would be very tickled to finally discuss such a thing with an academic authority on journalism.

You're right, Marc. The hypothetical feelings of a journalist in my made-up fable are a long, long way from an eningeering problem, or a scientific investigation. They are meant to have perhaps some literary or expressive value, but nothing "harder" than that. Plus, they are woefully untestable.

Alternatively, they might make you think.

No online list of Mark Styn's streak of successful predictions? That is hard to believe. He's one of the most popular columnists on the Web. Plus, his run of correct predictions must have something to do with the liberal orthodoxies he's not victim to, right? That too is a subject of intense interest online. You would figure someone would put that together...

Here is what you say about the exciting area of adapting what's known in reputation systems to the problems of rating journalists as information providers: "Seeing how you are a successful and well-recognized academic in the relevant field, perhaps you'd be interested in lobbying NYU or your peers to fund an experiment in this area?"

Now really, Marc-- is that how young conservatives do things? Ask somebody to give you a grant for it? Depend on the intellectual jerk off community to support the work?

Build it yourself if you think it's a good idea. (I do think so, by the way. Potentially profitable too.)

Obviously I struck a chord with you to be getting this level of needling!

The project i suggested to you was just that, a suggestion you may enjoy exploring or just thinking about. I will make a bet with you if you would like that we will end up in that direction anyway regardless of whether you or I take part in it, but I am too busy to work on that project myself now.

The deeper level of what I am trying to criticise in your post, perhaps unsuccessfully, is that in trying to examine "what is wrong with journalism" or "what is wrong with the media", you present essentially literary modes of thinking. The only thing that I can see is actually wrong, is a strong level of factual and predictive inaccuracy that falls along very predictable ideological lines in some areas, but in others (technology, law, medicine, or any professional area) are just randomly-scattered acts of ignorance.

I am just saying there IS a simple answer, and its not a head scratcher, its tying market economics to predictive accuracy, and we can be a part of it or not, but it will happen eventually. If you look at (as I do) the intelligence community as being the public sector military research end of the journalistic industry, then the fact that the intelligence community already knows that the answer lies in that direction implies that eventually it will trickle to the private sector as well.

I appreciate the humor in calling me a socialist and everything, but are you not the academic on the cutting edge here? By making a post about it, or examining the topic yourself, you would then be contributing to making it happen. Journalism discussion as a way to make things happen.

About Mark Steyn's columns archive:
Thanks John Lynch for finding that, it didnt come up on Google, I only found the actual archives of the Chicago Sun-Times, etc., which are pay-per-view for old columns.

Not being paid to be a media researcher or commenter myself, I won't crawl through all of them to make a tally myself. But I bet you $36 (which I will pay via mailed check or PayPal if wrong) that Steyns accuracy will be greater than 95% on claims he explicitly stakes his career/reputation on.

Again, I want to strongly suggest, that if you included this challenge as part of a post on the predictive accuracy + market economics issue, then probably someone with the time and interest will actually do this for you. That is how a lot of the software running your weblog system was likely written, and it is a great use of your "pulpit".

Strike a chord? Many readers do that, yes. In your case, Marc, I simply don't think that being a young conservative or a believer in science entitles you to also be a jerk. And saying things like, "Has it occured to the intellectual jerk-off community that competition might be the key?" is being a jerk. If that's a chord, consider it struck.

Second, when you write:

Let's try some problem solving: look at an ACTUAL broken aspect of the system: the contemporary journalistic wisdom has been wrong lately on many important issues, such as, oh, let's say or likelihood of success in Afghanistan and then Iraq.

you are, apparently without realizing it, making statements that are of a literary and expressive nature at best. After all, I am betting you don't have any ACTUAL knowledge--like a study, real data--that would show in some verifiable and scientific way a.) what "contemporary journalistic wisdom" was on, say, Afghanistan, b.) what portion of it was predictive, c.) what those predictions said, and d.) how accurate they were given the way event turned out.

Such work is done. It's called content study.

But you didn't do any content study before dropping on us your fake fact about journalistic wisdom in Afghanistan being "wrong." What you have instead is a personal impression or perhaps it is a conviction: journalists were wrong about Afghanistan. Maybe you have in mind a few columnists who were.

I don't know why you're so confident of your impression, and why you mistake it for real knowledge, but usually the reason people do that is that everyone does it in the intellectual jerk-off community to which they belong.

Oh, and I agree with you: a reputation system for journalists as suppliers of information and analysis will be invented, whether we do it or not.

Marc, this is only my impression, but there are people in fields where prediction has much more impact than it does in journalism who do quite well on iffy records. Money managers and stock analysts come to mind, as do people involved in the spectacularly unsuccessful prediction of the post-invasion events in Iraq. It seems a bit unfair to me that Paul Wolfowitz can get away with predicting, against all available evidence, that the war would be self-financing while you want some poor five-figure schlub of a journalist to go down in flames for lesser sins.

SBW: If the journalist can bring the audience to the point that they're sitting beside him doing nothing as the trigger's pulled, isn't that a contribution to the advancement of civilization? I don't want to get too metaphysical here, but in that instance his job isn't so much to report what happened as to extrapolate his own guilt for not intervening into the larger guilt of a failure of civilization. That seems important to me. J'accuse.

Here is a little thing I wrote about the same subject, a while ago:
---------------------
See the TV action news reporter.
Report, report, report.
He's a man of action!
Always trotting the globe!
Ever ready to stand by when disaster strikes
or war ravages a country
or a plane is hijacked
or a criminal is caught.
Heroically he stands around a dramatic event
-- well, perhaps not too close --
-- maybe a few miles away from it --
-- or in a neighboring country --
and tells us what we are watching on the TV screen: "As you can see, we are still waiting for the plane to land."
"As you can see, we are still waiting for survivors to be found in the wreckage."
"As you can see, people are starving to death all around me."
Sometimes the reporter says: "Damn it, I can't just stand here and blab! Let me give the rescue workers a hand."
Kidding!!
The action news reporter would never do that.
He's too busy telling us what we're already watching.
-----------

As somebody who comes from the area, I have heard several versions of this story. Main elements are probably true to some extend. In fact, there is a Macedonian movie partially based on this particular premise called Before the Rain. The film’s main character is a photojournalist. You and your visitors may be interested in it.

Peter Jennings and Mike Wallace were confronted with exactly this question. Jennings struggled with it; Wallace did not.

and Wallace made the right decision.

One must keep in mind that, in the example cited, the Kosanese allowed the journalists to participate under the assumption that they would act as impartial observers of an alleged atrocity committed by the Americans. The American journalists, in other words, are being treated as non-combatants by the Kosanese, and for the journalists to betray that agreement would endanger all journalists.

The ambush would have occurred regardless of the nationality of the journalists in question --- if correspondents from a "neutral" country were involved, would they have any responsibility to prevent the ambush?

Finally, there is the practical aspect of the benefit of the reporting on the ambush --- the US military would be given a golden opportunity to learn more about the tactics of "the enemy" because of this report, and as a result present a loss of life of other soldiers.

Hi, Steven. Yes, I was aware of that confrontation (Wallace, Jennings, and the military on PBS) with a similar question. In fact, I am partially responsible for its ubiquity.

James Fallows featured the episode in his book. This was after I told him about seeing it on television years earlier. We were seated next to each other at a Washington dinner, and spent much of the meal discussing this program. I told him I had taped it because I found it so interesting. He asked me to mail him the tape; I did and it became a key part of his book, Breaking the News.

Now it's a famous story among critics of the news media, even though it's just a thought exercise, a hypothetical-- like my story.

However, the situations are not quite the same. The key moral choice in my story is the decision to accept the invitation in the first place. Once the journalists agrees, the other events are set in train. What looks like a "neutral" choice-- see for yourself, get a close-up view, be a witness, go with them to observe--is something other than what it seems.

The intellectual puzzle (for a journalism professor) is: where would the reasoning come from for the journalist who decides that he should not go into the hills above Sarajevo to observe?

Steven writes: "Peter Jennings and Mike Wallace were confronted with exactly this question. Jennings struggled with it; Wallace did not."

Then Ogletree turned to the two most famous members of the evening's panel, better known than William Westmoreland himself. These were two star TV journalists: Peter Jennings of World News Tonight and ABC, and Mike Wallace of 6o Minutes and CBS. Ogletree brought them into the same hypothetical war. He asked Jennings to imagine that he worked for a network that had been in contact with the enemy North Kosanese government. After much pleading, the North Kosanese had agreed to let Jennings and his news crew into their country, to film behind the lines and even travel with military units. Would Jennings be willing to go? Of course, Jennings replied. Any reporter would-and in real wars reporters from his network often had.

"Any reporter would." And during the show both Jennings and Wallace agreed-- they would go.

Jay, you went to great lengths in describing the manner in which the sniper "involved" the journalist in the shooting of innocent victims---and virtually every one of the comments on this thread has focussed on the ethical/moral responsibility of the journalist as a result of that involvement.

Thus it is unfair of you to criticize Steven for providing another example of the kind of ethical/moral conflicts that everyone else here seems to be focussing on in response to your original post. Maybe it was not your intention to have your post interpreted the way it was; indeed, maybe you erred in using the example you cited to make your point (shades of Eason Jordan!). But don't blame Steven for what he did.

Weldon: SBW: If the journalist can bring the audience to the point that they're sitting beside him doing nothing as the trigger's pulled, isn't that a contribution to the advancement of civilization? ... in that instance his job isn't so much to report what happened as to extrapolate his own guilt for not intervening into the larger guilt of a failure of civilization. That seems important to me. J'accuse.

I doubt it. Literature is the vehicle for projecting possible futures. It's how we practice how to respond.

Jay: The intellectual puzzle ... is: where would the reasoning come from for the journalist who decides that he should not go into the hills above Sarajevo to observe?

Is the journalist's job to observe or to understand? There is a difference and the latter is more useful.

Is the journalist's job to convey? You cannot convey if at first you violate the sympathetic contract with the reader.

And where is the sympathetic contract with yourself? Oh. Forgive me. I know. "I was only doing my job."

re: the differences between the Bosnia Sniper and Kosanese "thought exercises".

In the Kosanese example, you can make the argument of journalistic impartiality witnesses a military event (ambush) between military forces. The exercise is over the ethic of loyalty and an instructive excercise if not always seen by everyone as a dilemma.

That's not true of the sniper excercise. The targets are civilians. The act is a war crime. In this case it is not a question of impartiality but amorality. A different exercise. There is no ethic of amorality. What is the dilemma?

Is the journalist's job to observe or to understand? There is a difference and the latter is more useful.

but how does one understand without observation? It is one thing to say "snipers from the other side are reported to be killing innocent people" and a completely different thing to say "Snipers from the other side ARE killing innocent people." The only way that you can say with absolute assurance that the side killing the innocents is "the other side" is by observing them in the act of killing.

This is where the true value of journalism lies --- journalists can act as the eyes and ears of the general public---and that public is much wider than just the public that consists of "our side". Bushco has shown how easy it is to simply lie about a given topic, and get "he said/she said" coverage out of it. Absent first hand accounts, "the enemy" can claim that "our side" is killing the innocents -- and "impartial" international reporters will present it as a "he said/she said" issue.

In other words, the (actual and potential) audience for "American" journalism is far wider than just the USA, and only if American journalists do not engage in chauvinistic reporting will that journalism be considered credible by the wider audience. IF "our side" is the "good side", and "our side's" reporters provide an "internationalist" view of a situation, then the international audience is far more likely to support "our side."

Is the journalist's job to convey? You cannot convey if at first you violate the sympathetic contract with the reader.

But you are not doing your job if you pander to the prejudices of your audience -- journalists who worry about "violating the sympathetic contract with the reader" wind up sugar-coating (or avoiding) unpleasant truths that an electorate must confront if it is to make informed decisions in a democracy.

Several people, including weldon in this thread, used the word "talmudic" for my story, and it's meant to have that kind of effect. There is no simple way to interpret it, and no single meaning. (Although many dispute this, for they have The Answer.)

Rather than throw up our hands at the disputes we find when we discusss it, the story invites us to trace very closely the logic of how things move from little step A to little step B, and so on... right up until the devasating result.

What I am trying to show you is--and you can hurl any tomato you want at me for playing professor in this post--that if the reporter can get there, to the perch with the Serb snipers above Sarajevo, by making good journalistic decisions and using sound intellectual principles, then we have a problem. For look at the result we have reached.

If you are a good, professional observer then you will become a participant in the evils of the day as long as they are encoded as news.

Or: journalism and its ethics, professionalism and its higher goods, are both radically incomplete moral systems.

Which raises the question of what they are missing. Thus: the abyss I refer to. And the perch that was an abyss.

Again, there is no single interpretation possible. There is no single side of the story. It has as many entry points as the besieged city of Sarajevo, where we once had a Winter Olympics.

One more thing... have you ever felt that disorienti ng effect of traveling to another place where the people look different and you turn on your television to the local news and there's a person who doesn't look different or the same, but like a third category: televisual, the anchorman look. The look from nowhere. There's a moral system that goes with that sculpted nowhere everyman pretty boy haircut anchorman look. We should not be surprised if it turns up empty.

Let's see if we can further this thought experiment, feel free to disagree:

The sniper, who travels everyday with the premeditation to murder civilians in order to terrorize and besiege a city, is committing an internationally recognized immoral act. The sniper himself may be amoral, in a sociopathic sense, or immoral in a way that he is fully aware of his crime.

This war criminal makes an offer to a journalist that supposedly operates with a professional ethic.

"Come watch what I do. Witness my crime. Behold my power and tell my story, increasing the reach of the terror with the telling of it."

No, not all that is explicitly made obvious to the reporter. And yes, the offer is made by an intermediary not the sniper himself, but is the reporter curious about the motivations of the invitation? Should she be? Is she a player?

What motivation does the sniper have not to kill the reporter as well? He does have one, he does not kill the reporter and the reporter must believe there is a reason she will not be killed by someone who has demonstrated no problem killing civilians.

What professional ethic compells the reporter to put herself in the care of this sniper and travel with him with the intent to passively witness a war crime? What professional ethic would give her the expectation that she is a non-entity, a ghost in corporeal form, detached from the implications of the sniper's actions and her own, existing in metaphysical space - despite occupying physical space next to the sniper in his perch - from which she can view from nowhere - despite looking through the sniper's scope at his intended victims.

The fatalistic question posed by the sniper to the journalists is almost superfluous by in a way seals the deal. Don't just behold my power, don't just watch, but experience it. "which one, left or right?" It could have even been, "Which one first, left or right?"

The power of life and death Ms. Nowhere, exercised arbitrarily, with the intent to terrorize - choose, participate, get the full experience so you can write about it.

Participate so you can experience it and write about it, isn't that why you're here? Why else would you come?

And flagrantly, because there is a contract between this reporter and the sniper based on the reporter's commitment to passivity, to non-judgmental amorality, to journalism's professional ethic.

But Jay's thought excercise does not really end there. Now, the reporter must write the story. It would be unprofessional not to. And she must adhere to certain journalistic principles in telling the story. The anonymity of the sniper, perhaps. The anonymity of the location, his perch. The euphemisms of militant or guerrilla. And so on ....

And to pander, or not, to what audience? Isn't the market for this story international? Won't it have the same terrorizing effect and engender sympathies and outrage around the world, for and against?

journalism and its ethics, professionalism and its higher goods, are both radically incomplete moral systems.

not in the least. You ignore the role that truth and knowledge play in the development of moral systems.

The reporter in the "sniper" story is not really morally compromised by what he has done, because he is not in any real sense a participant in the deaths of those shot by the sniper.

Without reporters willing to observe, and report on, the very real face of evil, we are left with only an approximation of that evil -- and are very likely to "fill in the blanks" based on our own prejudices. I want that reporter to accompany that sniper, because I think its important to know what motivates him, and how he perceives himself. Without that reporter, we are left with explanations like "They hate us because of our freedoms"; when in fact "they" may hate us because we killed and maimed their parents, children, brothers and sisters. The sniper may be motivated to kill "innocent civilians" by the fact that his completely innocent sister was raped and murdered by "the other side" --- and although that does not make it "moral" to kill civilians, it does legitimately change the sniper from some embodiment of evil to a flesh and blood human being.

There are similar observations here: In some circumstances, a refusal to take sides implicitly is a decision to take one side.

If a reporter tries to be "uninvolved" and helps one side distribute its agitprop, are they actually helping that side?

Where is the dividing line between "observation" and "collaboration"?

I don't believe it is possible to be uninvolved. I think that "journalistic detachment" is a pleasing myth that journalists tell themselves as a way of feeling noble and salving their consciences.

Perhaps the difference between you and me is that you are a professor of journalism and I am a student (perhaps a dilettante) of military science. What I know is that publicity is just as much a weapon of war as artillery, and reporters who "get the word out" for insurgents in asymmetric military confrontations are aiding those insurgents, because publicity is the most important weapon for such insurgents.

By trying to remain disinterested, by refusing to make a judgment, by trying to treat both sides equally, journalists implicitly help such insurgencies, and must therefore accept the ethical and real consequences of doing so.

By refusing to make a decision, journalists are in fact making a decision. The problem I see is that journalists try to deny they are doing so.

I do not say that journalists should never observe and report about such insurgents. What I say is that when they do, journalists must be aware of the consequences of doing so, and understand the moral burden they bear for doing so. I do not think most journalists accept their responsibilities; instead, they seek absolution and redemption in the myth of "journalistic detachment".

When I was a kid, I was a pacifist. (I was a lot of things when I was a kid.) When I told other kids I thought it was always wrong to kill, they hauled out the standard challenge: what if you're in the front line behind a machine gun and the enemy is charging you?

That always troubled me; when I was a kid I never had an answer. It took me years to understand that challenge and to come up with the right answer: If I were a pacifist and I found myself in such a position, then I have already committed an immoral act and am already stuck with the moral consequences of having done so. The answer is that I should shoot, or accept that by refusing to do so I let my fellows be killed. Both answers are wrong, but that's not because of the decision to shoot or not shoot.

It's because I made a decision earlier which led to me being in that place and time, facing that decision.

I would put it to you that the reporter being asked "Left or Right" is in exactly the same situation. To answer or not answer at that point are equally bad choices. The reporter is indeed morally culpable for the situation, but ethically speaking their real immoral act came earlier when they consented to place themselves in that situation.

It is not the case that the decision to choose or not choose "left and right" is the ethical issue. The ethical issue is why the reporter consented to be in there in the first place.

If a reporter makes the decision to accompany such a sniper, they must accept the possibility that their presence may lead them to be morally entangled in the events as they unfold.

If they refuse to include that as a consideration in their decision as to whether to accompany the sniper, they reveal that they are fundamentally unethical. They cannot hide behind claims of "journalistic detachment"; just by being there they are attached, not detached.

The reporter went "only" to observe. But the sniper changed the observer into a culpable person, a participant in the criminal siege of the city from above. This was done against the journalist's will, and so a kind of mind rape goes on within the prism of the story.

That's an interesting transition from a consensual act to "mind rape". It deserves more attention.

Jay's question is: "Where would the reasoning come from for the journalist who decides that he should not go into the hills above Sarajevo to observe?"

Since this is a moral dilemma, the obvious answer is that the reasoning would come from a moral system of some kind.

The question then is, does journalism provide that moral system?

In 28 years as a journalist, the only system I ever learned for arriving at moral answers in the newsroom was "if it's legal, we can do it."

In other words, in newsrooms the law itself is used as the definitive moral system.

So is the law a good enough moral system for journalists? Or does journalism need something more -- a more complete, a deeper, moral code incorporated into the profession?

Medicine has such a code,the Hippocratic Oath, which includes not only "Do no harm" but also "Give no deadly medicine to any one if asked," "Give no medicine to induce abortion," and "With purity and with holiness I will pass my life and practice my Art."

How come journalists don't have a moral system that picks up where the law falls off? Do we use the law merely as a moral crutch?

How about the Golden Rule? If the journalist was one of those people in the alley, would he want a journalist up in a belfry to observe him through the riflescope of a sniper, and then to stand by passively as the sniper squeezed off two shots?

How about the Ten Commandments as a moral code?

How about our own Stephen Waters' "Simple Wisdom?" (http://swaters.rny.com/)

Sisyphus, where's your take on the amorality of an observer arise from? A truly amoral observer would either have picked someone to die to see what happened, or pulled the trigger himself. Is a reporter who watches a publicly sanctioned execution amoral because he doesn't push the button if he supports the death penalty, or doesn't attempt to interfere if he opposes it?

What you're proposing, it seems to me, is that any reporter who witnesses an act he finds morally reprehensible is obligated to interfere. Should Helen Thomas have attempted to strangle the president when he announced the invasion of Iraq?

Should the reporter who opposes the death penalty simply refuse to observe its imposition? Should the reporter who opposes war crimes simply refuse to observe their commission? Should reporters who opposed the invasion of Iraq have used their positions as embeds to sabotage military equipment or propagandize the soldiers with whom they traveled? Should reporters who supported the war have grabbed a gun and fired it? Should the cameraman who taped the killing of an unarmed, wounded insurgent have tackled the soldier who pulled the trigger, or grabbed a gun and helped, depending upon his moral take on the situation?

I'm as offended as anyone by the tendency of reporters now to report opposing sides of an issue as inherently equal out of some misguided interpretation of objectivity. But there's nothing in the story of the sniper to suggest that's what the reporter did.

SBW, maybe I was unclear: what the reporter did was provide civilization with an opportunity to prove itself. Civilization was doing exactly the same thing as the reporter, standing by and watching as war crimes are committed. His job is to make civilization aware of what it ignores and offer that entity the same choice he was given.

Steven, how about in investigative reporting? Reporters are in no way detached in these cases which are considered the highest achievements in journalism. Investigative reporters, and the newspapers and TV networks behind them, target wrongdoers and relish nailing them to the wall.

Yet when a reporter does an investigative piece, it's been my experience that the ultimate yardstick for a culprits "wrongdoing" is ultimately the law. Did the culprit break a law?, is always the first and last question that reporters and editors ask. If not, the reporter has a hell of a time getting his or her story into print.

I can't recall the reporter's name, but she won a Pulitzer a few years ago for a series of stories on prison rape. After she won the prize, she gave interviews explaining the hell she went through in the newsroom, initially trying to get her editors to care even a little bit about the story, and later to publish it.

My point being, she chose a story of moral wrondoing that was outside the system of the law to provide an easy answer. As a result, she had to fight twice the battle in the newsroom to get her story into print. Detachment may be the professional code many times, but not always.

Moral indignation is a driving motive in stories at the pinnacle of the profession, yet it's not a morality that goes very deep it seems -- no deeper than the law.

Just to add to the fun, here's a possible military example for being responsible for what you see:

Situation: CPT Smith is the team leader for the Task Force Black Advance Party Communications Team as part of Operation Restore Democracy (Haiti, 1994). The primary focus of the planning for this mission is to provide communications support to the Special Operations invasion force under Plan 2370. On September 18th, Rules of Engagement for both invasion and permissive entry (under Plan 2380 – Uphold Democracy) are briefed to the invasion force. Under Plan 2380 ROE, U.S. soldiers are permitted to use deadly force in defense of (U.S.) life and property, but are not to interfere in Haitian law enforcement activities. CPT Smith interprets this to mean not to interfere with Haitian police activities. On September 19th, the invasion force is informed that the operation would be conducted as a permissive entry. CPT Smith and his team mount helicopters with the rest of the invasion force and proceed from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to Port-Au-Prince, Haiti. Upon arrival at the Port-Au-Prince Airport, the communications team exits onto the public street in front of the airport to gain roof access to the building. A large crowd of Haitian civilians had gathered across the street from the airport. U.S. forces are separated from the Haitian civilians by hastily employed concertina wire. Three Haitian policemen are attempting to disperse the crowd by beating the on-lookers with switches and batons. The Haitian policemen are otherwise unarmed. The intensity of the beatings leads CPT Smith to believe that the Haitian civilians would be injured if not fatally beaten. Looking around, CPT Smith identifies a Haitian police officer that seems to be in charge and approximately 6 other U.S. soldiers on his side of the concertina wire. The Haitian officer has a holstered side arm; the U.S. soldiers are carrying M16s. CPT Smith is the senior officer at the scene, the Task Force Commander is inside the airport, and the requirement to establish communications is immediate.

Weldon: His job is to make civilization aware of what it ignores and offer that entity the same choice he was given.

Too small a view.

His job -- and each of our jobs, as individuals, groups, journalists -- is to manufacture a framework of morality out of absolutely nothing but our experience... and to do it again and again for each and every generation. It isn't God-given, although some believe it to be so. Whether it appears God-given or not, we are the ones who buy in to it and who convince others to do the same, for our own safety's sake.

Steven den Beste astutely reminds us that the real choice occurred before the choice given by the sniper.

I think journalists should make a moral decision in the situations they face and act upon those decisions - even, if as SDB points out their decision is not to act or even to decide.

I think the examples you give bely an unseriousness in your approach, so let me change the sniper situation to one I consider analogous.

Hypothetically, a reporter is invited to observe the gang rape of a minor child by UN officials, agrees to tag along, and one of the group of men asks the reporter, "which one of us do you want to go first?" Outraged, the reporter refuses to chose, then dutifully observes the rape and reports it.

Doug, all categorical statements are subject to exceptions. I make no claim that every journalist, every second of their working life, invariably cleaves to the principle of journalistic detachment.

I claim that many do, much of the time, and that usually the reason they do so is not because they occupy the moral high ground but because they are attempting to avoid the ethical burden of their acts.

"I'm a journalist, thus I can and should observe what happens without getting involved or making any moral judgement about what I see" is a crutch, a way of ducking the issue.

The way I read the "parable," the journalist should suspend his abstract thinking, not worry about what's right and what's wrong, or what his responsibility is as a journalist, and reach out with his emotional capabilities and try to intuit what the sniper's reaction will be to whatever answer he gives. If he's correct, he may save a life — if not, he's at least tried to save a life. I knew a young woman once, who, walking through a park late at night, was confronted by a man who threatened to rape her. The words that came out of her, spontaneously, were "You don't want to do that" — and he walked away. She intuited the right thing to say.

As to "unearned virtue," it is true that governing is difficult, and that insofar as it is difficult, those who govern deserve our fellow-feeling. It is also true, however, that those who seek to govern usually have mixed motivations — to seek the public good on the one hand, and to seek personal power, and/or the power of some minority they represent (ideological faction, business, ethnic or religious group, etc.) — i.e, a vested interest. It is, ideally, the role of journalists to "keep the bastards honest," to keep a check on self-, or narrow vested interest in government. To call the practice of this "unearned virtue" strikes me as bizarre. Journalists should be pointing out the failings of government.

I would argue that trust in the media has been failing for two quite different reasons:

(1) instead of acting as a check on government, journalism has degenerated into "gotcha" and "horse-race" coverage. Journalists have allowed themselves to be absorbed into the political process, since these are precisely the concerns of politicians themselves. The average citizen could care less about these things, and can see that journalists have joined the game, rather than standing critically outside it.

(2) as they have become better paid, journalists have lost touch with the lives of much of the population. "Homelessness," important though it may be, is primarily a concern of the well-off; the concerns of the working poor, and the working class itself, are ignored. Those who are ignored become bitter and angry. Rush Limbaugh is able to exploit that anger because the press ignores it.

And as to where Kaplan comes up with the idea that 90% of things are going right — what world does he live in? Certainly not this one.

By trying to remain disinterested, by refusing to make a judgment, by trying to treat both sides equally, journalists implicitly help such insurgencies, and must therefore accept the ethical and real consequences of doing so.

so are you suggesting that journalists should side with an invading force regardless of the nature of that invading force? For instance, should American journalists have provided the Russian perspective when it invaded Afghanistan, rather than remain "disinterested" and provide "publicity" for Afghani Freedom Fighters?

Or are you simply suggesting that reporters should do their jobs from a chauvinistic perspective only--- that its okay for an American journalist to provide support for an insurgency by being "disinterested" when its Russia invading Afghanistan, but that American journalists have a moral imperitive to provide coverage that will advance the American agenda, regardless of whether or not the US is (hypothetically, of course) in violation of international law, killing civilians, and torturing suspected insurgents?

In other words, isn't what you are suggesting actually using "ethics" as a fig leaf to promote a chauvinistic political agenda?

I think the examples you give bely an unseriousness in your approach, so let me change the sniper situation to one I consider analogous.

Hypothetically, a reporter is invited to observe the gang rape of a minor child by UN officials, agrees to tag along, and one of the group of men asks the reporter, "which one of us do you want to go first?" Outraged, the reporter refuses to chose, then dutifully observes the rape and reports it.

sorry, but this is really not analogous.

the sniper shooting at civilians is not simply commiting a criminal act, he is commiting a political act as well within a war setting. The purpose of the observation of by the journalist is not to observe the criminal act, but to observe the political one occurring with the war setting.

The rape of a child, on the other hand, is nothing other than a heinous criminal act---and in this instance, a journalist would have an ethical obligation to report the "offer", not merely to reject the offer to observe the crime.

There are sensible principles that civil people, societies and journalists share. There are other things they about which they disagree. If your society runs afoul of core principles, go vocal or leave.

p.lukasiak: "The purpose of the observation of by the journalist is not to observe the criminal act, but to observe the political one occurring with the war setting."

OK, then in the case where the rape has political implications - as was reported in Yugoslavia, Rawanda and Darfur - the "journalist would [NOT] have an ethical obligation to report the "offer", [and could] merely [] reject the offer to observe the crime."

Sisyphus, I assure you I am completely serious. I'm sorry you get another impression. What you seem to be suggesting is that it's more moral to refuse to cover moral outrages than it is to accept the responsibility and whatever guilt arises from being a witness and do it anyway. Should we then simply refuse to look at situations where we know something bad is likely or certain to happen? And what, count on other people to bring them to light? Who?

Watching someone rape a child would be horrible. I don't know anyone who wouldn't be moved to intervene. But which act is of more service to the world: intervening and getting killed for your trouble, or taking names and reporting them? And which act holds the more dreadful consequences for the reporter: dying while trying to stop it, or living with the images and actually doing something to stop the perpetrators from doing it again, and again? In that particular instance I'd be inclined to report the guy to the local cops and his superiors and lock myself in my room and hope for the best, but that guarantees nothing other than that no one will ever tell me of planned bad acts again.

What should our reporter in the sniper example have done? And how would whatever that is better serve the world?

SBW, den Beste is simply wrong. I don't know where the assumption that the reporter decided to act thinking he could do so without moral consequences comes from. Might as well hire the three monkeys to cover everything distasteful.

OK, then in the case where the rape has political implications - as was reported in Yugoslavia, Rawanda and Darfur - the "journalist would [NOT] have an ethical obligation to report the "offer", [and could] merely [] reject the offer to observe the crime." Or, would the journalist go? ... "Any reporter would."

well, at least this is a more appropriate analogy.

And, in this instance, I would say that "any reporter" would be within his or her rights to refuse such an offer (or assignment).

I think that the distinction here is between "war crimes" and "crimes against humanity." The act of killing a few civilians in order to intimidate the populace is a war crime, but it does not, IMHO, rise to the level of a "crime against humanity." I would reserve that designation for acts of mass murder/genocide, torture, rape, etc. that occur within a "war" context.

But even under the circumstances of "crimes against humanity", I don't think it would be unethical for a journalist to observe and report them---indeed, I would suggest that a reporter who witnessed such an event and conveyed the full horror and evil of it would be doing a public service.

One final thought, which I think is germaine to this topic, but has not directly addressed (as far as I can tell).

As someone (Sisyphus?) has noted, "publicity" is essential to the success of any insurgency. This raises the issue of "staged" events, and the ethical equation in the "sniper" story would be quite different if a war crime would not occur absent the presence of a journalist who could provide "publicity."

(But the question of how journalists should cover "non-criminal" staged events in a war setting presents a whole 'nother set of ethical dillemas. IMHO, the coverage of the "toppling of Saddam's statue" was one of the media's worst hours....)

Weldon: What you seem to be suggesting is that it's more moral to refuse to cover moral outrages

Weldon, that's contrived. The event WILL be covered. The reporter can look at the splattered meat that received the bullet and "cover" it without having to sight down the barrel as the hammer falls.

Further down Weldon says: SBW, den Beste is simply wrong. I don't know where the assumption that the reporter decided to act thinking he could do so without moral consequences comes from. Might as well hire the three monkeys to cover everything distasteful.

Weldon, your framework of moral relativism is certainly possible, just not sensible or safe. It is nothing more than the law of the jungle. Since it is possible to create a framework that is likely safer for you than that, you really ought to try.

wb: "Sisyphus, I assure you I am completely serious. I'm sorry you get another impression."

I knew you were, but the image of Helen Thomas bounding up to the Presidential podium with arms outstretched ... well, that was a little much for me.

;-)

"What you seem to be suggesting is that it's more moral to refuse to cover moral outrages than it is to accept the responsibility and whatever guilt arises from being a witness and do it anyway."

I don't think that's what I'm suggesting. I'm suggesting that you either have to put aside morality to passively attend (perhaps with no guilt?) or have an articulated moral framework which would ... require?, permit? ... what might be described as passive participation. Is that a good description? Passive participation?

"Should we then simply refuse to look at situations where we know something bad is likely or certain to happen? And what, count on other people to bring them to light? Who?"

Fair question. No.

But then I have some questions of my own. Is it a journalistic requirement that the "something bad" happens in order to report on it? Can a journalist refuse to act to prevent the "something bad" happening in order to remain ... what?, uninvolved? not a participant? not a player? ... and then attend the "something bad" in progress in order to get all the details - the "truth" - of the "something bad" in order to report it?

If the "something bad" happens without the journalist attending, does that mean it can NOT be reported?

"But which act is of more service to the world: intervening and getting killed for your trouble, or taking names and reporting them?"

Great ethical question! Some (but not all) of the answer might be found in the ethics of egoism.

"Is self-preservation a moral imperative or just a fact? Are there situations in which self-preservation is not the highest value? Is it selfish to prefer (saving) one's own life to that of others? From an evolutionary standpoint, is "survival of the fittest" selfish or selfless?"*

Another part of the answer might be found in the ethics of relative harm.

There is also the question implied that if the act of doing nothing is unethical, can that be mitigated - or ammeliorated - by a greater good served by that unethical act. Such as preventing future acts. But there is an assumption, I think, that the reporter becomes a player in preventing future acts when the reporter did nothing to prevent the current (or planned) one.

"What should our reporter in the sniper example have done? And how would whatever that is better serve the world?"

I can't come up with an ethical framework for passively participating in the sniper's war crime, except - possibly - with the intent to expose the sniper's identity, perch and the act as a war crime and the sniper as a war criminal.

You are correct that there is great personal risk in choosing that course of action. That's not necessarily an unheard of situation, is it? Would it be comparable to what an undercover detective/agent does? There are specific rules for what crimes the agent can/might witness/participate in for the "greater good" of a later outcome, right?

I think there's a fundamental question we're all dancing around: does there come a point where a reporter has to take off their "reporter" hat and instead act as a citizen, or as an ethical human being?

At what point does remaining in the role of "reporter" become unethical? When does the human obligation to act override the reporter obligation to observe without interfering?

Steven den Beste: does there come a point where a reporter has to take off their "reporter" hat and instead act as a citizen, or as an ethical human being?

I may not have written about it here, but I certainly thought about it today. I'm the guy who wrote Activism undermines journalism", which I still believe generally to be the case, but who believes that the core principles of individuals, journalists and civil society have to be defended.

Now I'm obliged to harmonize the two. ;-)

Previously, I said that a good reporter travels light -- without many preconceived notions -- when reporting. But "light" is not empty.

My point about Helen and about the reporter at an execution is that the only difference between their situations and the sniper journalist's is that the repugnant, in their view, acts they're witnessing are state-sanctioned. The moral dilemma isn't the slightest bit different. They can try to kill or have killed the perpetrators or they can report on the situation in the hope that it will motivate their audience to work change.

Put our journalist in the position of being a passenger in this F-16. Should he have declined the ride, knowing that wars beget war crimes, or should he have attempted to seize control of the aircraft, knowing that no one has established whether the targets are civilians or not, or should he simply live with what he's seen and report it in an attempt to prevent it from happening again?

If the "something bad" happens without the journalist attending, does that mean it can NOT be reported?

If there's no witness, who is going to report it? Your average Sarajevo resident can't pick up the phone to call AP and tell them their sister just got gunned down on the street, and AP wouldn't print it anyway without someone on the scene and some means of verifying who did it.

You are correct that there is great personal risk in choosing that course of action. That's not necessarily an unheard of situation, is it? Would it be comparable to what an undercover detective/agent does? There are specific rules for what crimes the agent can/might witness/participate in for the "greater good" of a later outcome, right?

It's common enough for undercover agents to witness and indeed even excuse, if not encourage, horrible crimes. The difference is they don't tell us about it. Look at the recent trials of FBI agents who intervened on behalf of informants they knew to be murderers. The CIA certainly knew that the Afghani insurgents they supported were raping and torturing captured Russian troops because, among other reasons, the Afghanis gave them photos of the activities, which the CIA arranged to be supplied to Russian troops.

Cops or spies are generally expected to do what they can to live through the situation; I think, anyway. They prioritise. If they find themselves in the middle of a plot to assassinate the president and they're faced with a choice of doing nothing or acting to prevent it at the risk of their own life, they'd be expected to choose the latter. If they're faced with the choice of doing nothing or acting to save the life of someone they know to be scum, or someone who may be innocent but whose rescue would blow an operation aimed at saving considerably more innocents, the choice begins to become more difficult.

But that's a different job description. What we seem to be talking about here, ultimately, are the reporter's motives and moral sense within the framework of his or her job, and of course that's dependent upon what the reporter, and in this instance we, thinks the job is. I think there's a huge ethics problem within the institutional press, but I think it lies more on the side of using objectivity as a shield against actually doing their jobs and making difficult moral judgements, and I'd argue that the reporter who refuses the offer to witness a war crime is making a moral judgement in favor of the perpetrators; he's giving them the right to do what they do with no witness acting on behalf of the wider world in order to preserve his own virginity.

It is not possible to observe and publicize something without implicitly being involved in it. Journalists must abandon their fantasy of Olympian detachment.

I would agree with that statement....but not with what I believe you are trying to say with it.

A reporter who observes an atrocity cannot report that atrocity with clinical (or, Olympian) detachment, as if the atrocity was morally neutral. But in order to report on that atrocity appropriately---in order to accurately convey the full horror of the atrocity, the reporter often needs to observe it as it happens.

perhaps another hypothetical is in order. A reporter had heard rumors of what was occurring at Auschwitz during WWII. He is offered an opportunity to confirm those rumors by a German officer who is morally outraged by what is occurring there. Does the reporter take the officer up on his offer? If he does so, does he have an obligation to attempt to intervene when he witnesses the atrocities occurring there?

I think SDB is correct; the reporter is assuming there are no moral consequences of his "observations". Belief in action/ going, without consequences, is wrong.

Jay, fantastic fable. Very relevant with E. Jordan being booted (finally), and with the pro-insurgent news coverage. I thought Marc named the "intellectual jerk off" fairly well; Jay's half-acceptance by calling most blog readers/ thinkers jerks for their own side is also a good half-counter. (I look for reasoned arguments & friction, but not too many flames.)

Sisyphus adding some fluff is fun, and UN child rape is truly disgusting (where IS the Leftist press, Jay?) but perhaps more distracting than focusing on the issue -- WHAT is the ethical journalist to do?

I'm not yet convinced the ethical journo doesn't go. In going, he accepts some complicity in the crimes committed.

Whose side is he on? There is no fence to be on, only with, or against? Real life is never third person omniscient.

Isn't it fairly accepted that the press coverage of Vietnam helped convince the US to leave? In other words, Walter Cronkite & the press, in being against the US fighting, was in favor of the N. Vietnamese winning, in favor of some 800 000 murders and 2 million next door in Cambodia.

The press denial of their support for commies, and thus genocide, is why I don't trust them. There's two kinds of gov't; by democracy or death squads. Those against democracy favor death squads.

There is no Unreal Perfection alternative; not from nowhere nor from any news.

Isn't it fairly accepted that the press coverage of Vietnam helped convince the US to leave? In other words, Walter Cronkite & the press, in being against the US fighting, was in favor of the N. Vietnamese winning, in favor of some 800 000 murders and 2 million next door in Cambodia.

This is as good an example as one can find of the egregious flaws of what passes for media criticism from the right wing.

The press (in this case, represented by Walter Cronkite) did not decide to be "against the US fighting" on ideological grounds, but on practical ones --- Cronkite was pretty much of a supporter of the war at the time he went to Vietnam to report on the aftermath of the Tet offensive. But when he saw what was going on, he concluded that the war was unwinnable militarily, and advised that the US open negotiations with the North Vietnamese to reach a peace agreement.

The right wing, rather than accept this, concludes that Cronkite "was in favor of the N. Vietnamese winning."

And this is the same dynamic one sees throughout right-wing media criticism. If a reporter does not march in lockstep with the right wing agenda, he is "in favor of [the enemy] winning." The facts are irrelevant, the reputation and history of the reporter is irrelevant, all that matters is whether the journalist presents a view of the world that is completely consistent with the right-wing agenda.
If its not, the reporter is a traitor.

That is why the observations coming from the right wing on the question of the "abyss of observation" are so intellectually dishonest. They are unconcerned with journalistic ethics per se, and judge what is "ethical" through the distorted lens of ideology and chauvinism.

(They have yet to confront the role of non-American journalists --- everything is perceived and evaluated solely on what the moral/ethical obligations of an American reporter are.)

Indeed, Walter Cronkite was following the "ethics" of those who believe that the reporter, acting as an observer of wrongdoing, is necessarily a participant in that wrongdoing. Walter Cronkite saw wrongdoing, and refused to participate in it, and did what he could to stop it. And for his efforts, he is accused of being a traitor.

On Romenesko today: The Washington Post's Jackie Spinner, returned from Iraq, says she's accused of being anti-American whenever she writes a story that some think is critical of the U.S. military. "I am in Iraq to find the truth and at great risk to myself and at great worry to my family," the Post reporter says. "So when I go out and report a story, it's not tell a side or to make point, it's simply to tell a story. I think that is perhaps my greatest frustration. I know from talking to fellow journalists in Iraq that we don't feel we have the support of the American people. There are no yellow ribbons for us, and I'm not advocating that there should be. It's just an observation after months of sharing a war zone with soldiers and Iraqis."

I was just about to post that exact same quote Jay...accompanied by this one... (in response to a question about the work of other journalists covering Iraq)

I don't like the way the "press corps" always covers Iraq. I can't really offer any specifics except to say that not everyone is interested in being objective. There are reporters who come in with agendas. I've heard their loaded questions at press conferences. I've read their files. And we're not perfect either at the Washington Post. But we try to be unbiased. I can't tell you how much we try to go in asking questions, not looking for specific answers, just the truth. It is our highest goal. It is the reason I became a journalist.

I contended very early in this thread that the reporter here is in fact a knowing accomplice to a war crime and thus as guilty of the crime as the sniper.

Most posts here acknowledge that there is a war crime being committed (targeting of civilians). The journalist knows beforehand that he is going to witness a war crime, goes anyway, and does in fact witness a war crime.

So to me the question of ethics here is very simple and I’ll say it again - when the journalist knowingly goes out of his way to witness a war-crime, without lifting a finger to prevent it, he becomes an accomplice to that war-crime and should stand at tribunal right beside the sniper who pulled the trigger.

One of the reasons, I think - now,anyway - that I resisted becoming a reporter was just this sort of discomfort. You go in, you observe things, you dutifully write down what's happened... and you present it as if it has nothing to do with you. And that's, on at least some level, bogus. Of course you're affected, of course it matters. Even if it's realizing you couldn't care less about what you're talking about, you're being affected.

I'm not sure there's an answer for this. I don't think it helps, necessarily, that reporters cling to a notion of objectivity that's highly questionable and on some level nonexistent. I think it's less helpful, though, when reporters abandon even the pretense of objectivity in favor of pure opinion when reporting. Although it's more "honest", it's also a frank admission that what you're reading (or seeing) is simply an unreliable distortion.

By the way, I think a lot of what drives this more partisan world is, well, television. A world in which the visuals take precedence over the words is what's led to questioning of reporters, I think, in many instances. "You said it was this," they say, "but I can see with my own eyes that it happened some other way." I think we give the visual way too much power at times. I've never seen Michael Jackson behave in a lewd or disrepectful way with kids, and he sounds so mistreated when he says he's innocent... he can't be guilty, right?

I don't think the question raised in the (fascinating) debate of Marc and Jay above matters so much... it's not the predictive nature of some reporting that bothers me. It's the assertion, which many reporters still make without irony, that they can look at the stories they tell with an utter dispassion and pure objectivity. And I keep thinking, there's nothing pure about it.

"everything is perceived and evaluated solely on what the moral/ethical obligations of an American reporter are"

"What we seem to be talking about here, ultimately, are the reporter's motives and moral sense within the framework of his or her job, and of course that's dependent upon what the reporter, and in this instance we, thinks the job is."

Sisyphus, a moral framework that does not transcend artificial national boundaries (or job-description boundaries in the case of a reporter) is inadequate. That's more politically correct than saying it is unhinged.

I think there is an ethical difference between the Bosnian Sniper scenario and the F16/Kevin Sites scenario. That's not to say there are no ethical questions involved with both, or that some of the questions are similar. In other words, I'm not trying to invalidate your example(s), but I'm also trying not to get pulled down the road too far from a scenario where a journalist makes a decision to accept an invitation to passively observe an intentional war crime to the scenario of what to do when something unexpectedly happens in front of a journalist during war that raises questions of whether a war crime occurred.

I see those as different scenarios, but both worry of discussion.

One of the issues I raised earlier (if there is a journalistic ethic of non-judgmental amorality, which there seems to be some agreement here that there is not - or should not) is:

"It makes it impossibe for journalists to raise questions of whether this questionable act is moral when they have refused in the past to describe blantantly obvious acts of evil as immoral."

I also see a similar issue in the "internationalist" journalistic view. Can you be a watchdog of every government, of the international community at large?

If you decide not to be a watchdog of other governments as an "internationalist" journalist, or don't do it well, it makes it more difficult to be a watchdog of your own government.

You become the umpire who covers the whole game but only calls fouls on one team.

We have a reporter on the LA city beat covering gang violence. Gang A invites the reporter (through an intermediary he knows) to tag along and witness a drive-bye shooting against Gang B – to “see for yourself what they do.” The reporter knows that a crime is going to be committed, knows full well that a person or several people are going to be murdered, in all likelihood, not even members of Gang B but innocent bystanders, civilians if you will.

Knowing that, he accepts their offer. He meets the gang members and rides in the car with them as they commit murder. 2 people are killed.

This reporter is now an accomplice to murder, by the laws of many states just as guilty as the person(s) who pulled the trigger. Hiding behind his profession will do nothing to shield him from a charge of murder.

We have a reporter on the LA city beat covering gang violence. Gang A invites the reporter (through an intermediary he knows) to tag along and witness a drive-bye shooting against Gang B – to “see for yourself what they do.” The reporter knows that a crime is going to be committed, knows full well that a person or several people are going to be murdered, in all likelihood, not even members of Gang B but innocent bystanders, civilians if you will.

the flaw in these kinds of examples is that there is a distinct difference between a "war crime" and crimes such as the one that you describe. You simply ignore the fact that its considered "legal" to kill people in a war zone, while in LA its illegal to kill anyone.

In an insurgency situation, the difference between "civilian" and "military" get blurred.

If insurgents declare that anyone found on the streets will be considered a collaborator subject to being shot, doesn't that change the equation?

If an occupying power declares that anyone who gets to close to a convoy will be considered a threat and subject to being shot, does that change the equation?

If a reporter accompanies a military convoy, knowing that civilian vehicles are likely to be blown to smithereens if they get too close to the convoy, does that make him culpable in the death of the civilians?

If you decide not to be a watchdog of other governments as an "internationalist" journalist, or don't do it well, it makes it more difficult to be a watchdog of your own government.

first off, how and why does "not being a watchdog of other governments" make it "more difficult to be a watchdog of your own government?" In fact, it is extremely difficult for reporters to be "watchdogs of other governments" in the same way s/he can function as a "watchdog of their own government", because that reporter is inherently familiar with what is considered appropriate for his own government to do. (i.e. A British "watchdog" would find it especially newsworthy that the British army has condemned someone to death for a crime committed in an occupied territory, because Britain does not have the death penalty. Meanwhile, an American "watchdog" would not find a death sentence in the same circumstances to be of particular note --- because the US does allow for the death penalty.)

To suggest that an American reporter should "watchdog" foreign governments based on American standards is just more of the same "chauvinism in reporting" that I keep referring to. And insofar as the US refuses to be subject to international law when it comes to war crimes, to suggest that an American reporter use this "international" standard for all nations that the US refuses to abide by results in an extraordinary double standard.

Secondly, reporters very seldom get to decide the nature of their assignments in the way you suggest.

The question may well be valid for a journalistic organization, but is really not applicable to an individual reporter.

p.lukasiak: "To suggest that an American reporter should "watchdog" foreign governments based on American standards is just more of the same "chauvinism in reporting" that I keep referring to."

I'm not suggesting that an American reporter should be a watchdog of foreign governments.

I think there are a number of different "frames" that you can use - are in use and are not new - to report from a war zone.

For example, you can say, "I'm an American reporter and a watchdog of the American government. Therefore, I am more interested - find more news value - in wrongs committed by Americans than I am wrongs committed by the other side, or anyone else for that matter.

In other words, we're not sending journalists to Iraq to do blotter reports on domestic abuse in Iraq.

Now, I'm not sure, but that might fall under your defintion of chauvinism.

You could also say, "I'm an American journalist here to tell the American story of the war, which might include both stories of heroism and tragedy." That's another frame and it also might fall under your defintion of chauvinism.

Those frames can also be employed by jouralists of other nationalities, they are not unique to American journalists.

You can also say, "I'm a journalist with no national identity, or a supra-national identity, or perhaps a compilation of all national identities. I represent the mores and values of humanity that apply across all national boundaries and value systems. I'm here to discover the universal "Truth" of the situation." That's another different frame. I'm pretty sure that it does not fall within your definition of chauvinism.

And, in fact, the journalist as a professional and a person, might use some or all of those frames depending on the story s/he wants to tell regardless of personal perceptions about national identity.

Sisyphus: In what way should a moral framework "transcend artificial national boundaries (or job-description boundaries in the case of a reporter)"?

What does that mean when moral frameworks within national boundaries and across them (as they often do) conflict?

I apologize. I was trying to conserve bandwidth, not be obscure or glib.

Any two people who interact create a society that can benefit from a minimal, agreed-upon framework for civil interaction. Put together three or more people and any two of them can agree to create another framework besides the minimum and call themselves a nation. That doesn't remove the need for the minimum framework. My link above on the Protective Umbrella talk about civil frameworks to avoid living in the law of the jungle.

the flaw in these kinds of examples is that there is a distinct difference between a "war crime" and crimes such as the one that you describe. You simply ignore the fact that its considered "legal" to kill people in a war zone, while in LA its illegal to kill anyone.

It is “legal” to kill enemy combatants in a war zone (excepting the obvious like those trying to surrender, wounded and out of action, etc.).
It is specifically NOT legal to intentionally kill civilians. It is a war crime and found guilty at military tribunal, the penalty is just as harsh (likely harsher) as that for murder in LA.

In an insurgency situation, the difference between "civilian" and "military" get blurred.

Agreed. But we aren’t talking about civilians caught in the cross-fire in the fog of war. We are talking about setting out with the intent to kill civilians, not enemy combatants.

And no, the other “what if’s” don’t change the equation. The only difference between the war crime and the crime I describe is the adjective “war”. Both are severe offenses with a severe punishment on conviction. In both cases, the journalist accompanies the perpetrator with advance knowledge of the crime to be committed and thereby makes himself an accomplice to the crime.

Just out of curiosity, when foreign journalists "watchdog" the American government based on their national standards, is that also an example of "chauvinism in reporting" that you keep referring to?

the issue of chauvinism in reporting is not about the nationality of the reporter, but the insistence that the only appropriate viewpoint from which a journalist can do his/her job is that of a particular nation.

And no, the other “what if’s” don’t change the equation.

so, you are saying that the United States is guilty of war crimes in Iraq? Because it has the policy of blowing up civilian vehicles if they get to close to military convoys, and they have followed through on that policy.

It was also a war crime for the United States to attacking and closing the last open hospital in Fallujah, thereby denying innocent civilians injured as a result of the US assault on that city any possibility of medical care. Were the reporters who were embedded with the units that attacked the hospital guilty of war crimes if they were told that the hospital was going to be attacked and closed?

p.lukasiak: "... but the insistence that the only appropriate viewpoint from which a journalist can do his/her job is that of a particular nation."

p.lukasiak: "In fact, it is extremely difficult for reporters to be "watchdogs of other governments" in the same way s/he can function as a "watchdog of their own government", because that reporter is inherently familiar with what is considered appropriate for his own government to do ..."

p.lukasiak: I've read complaints that American journalists should be better watchdogs of the American government using examples of critical "watchdog" stories of the American government by foreign journalists in foreign media.

I have previously understood that to be a complaint about "chauvinism" in American journalism. Is it because foreign journalists are better "watchdogs of other governments" - or particularly the American government - than American journalists that are "inherently familiar with what is considered appropriate for his own government to do"?

It seems a bit unfair to me that Paul Wolfowitz can get away with predicting, against all available evidence, that the war would be self-financing while you want some poor five-figure schlub of a journalist to go down in flames for lesser sins.

Well, the this weblog focuses on the changes in "journalism". The stock market money-managers you fingered are indeed fired for poor performance from what I have heard. As to Wolfowitz, I can only tell you that I was never informed that our war on Iraq would be self financing; I was told by President Bush that it would be a long and hard War on Terror with no easy victory in sight.

Your "five-figure shlubs" however, whose income range I happily share, have tried there damndest to convince the population of the world of a whole serious of unlikely things:
- quagmire and failure in afghanistan
- quagmire and failure in iraq
- jenin "massacre"
Just to name an egregious handful that now will not die in the popular consciousness.

I would submit that if Bush was problems with the accuracy of Wolfowitz's private predictions, he can deal with them.

If the citizenry have problems with the accuracy of journalistic observation and predictions, we are resolving them.

p.lukasiak, Venturing sideways into Iraq war crime statements is unproductive. No war, and avoiding the shrapnel it has caused, would have been nice, but it didn't happen that way. Get over it.

I'm sorry, but until you confront the very real fact that America is guilty of war crimes, and explain whether you feel that American journalists have fulfilled their ethical responsibilities in reporting on those crimes, I have to assume that you position on journalistic ethics in the hypothetical sniper scenario is not really an "ethical" position at all.

The reality is that the US does not need to resort to snipers to intimidate people in Iraq...it has tanks and bombers to do that and anti-personnel weapons to do that. An occupying power cannot, under international law, drop bombs on civilian neighborhoods solely because "insurgents" are suspected of being in that neighborhood. It cannot close civilian hospitals, and deny non-combatants injured in a crossfire access to medical care as a "tactic". It cannot indiscriminately blow civilian vehicles to smithereens because a small minority of civilian vehicles are being driven by suicide bombers. Simply because "insurgents" are not playing by the rules you want them to play by does not mean that an occupying power has any right whatsoever to violate those rules.

American journalists are watching these things happen, very often as "embedded" reporters who have been briefed on what will, or could, happen --- and there is a complete avoidance of confronting the very real question of their complicity in "war crimes".

I don't think that the journalist who accompanied the sniper is an accomplice in the snipers crime --- but that only holds true if the journalist does not make it clear that what the sniper did was a war crime. If the journalist in question does not relay that information, and instead treat the sniper's actions as if it is an acceptable tactic in a war situation, that journalist then becomes culpable.

And right now, we have a buttload of American reporters who are "culpable" of war crimes, because they are treating clear and unambiguous criminal acts under the Geneva conventions regarding the obligations of occupying powers toward civilian populations as if they were perfectly acceptable acts of war.

They aren't....and those of you who have gotten all high and mighty about the hypothetical reporter are nothing but hypocrites until you confront what very real journalists are doing about very real war crimes pepetrated in the name of the American people.

I argue that the morality of the journalist in this fable does not matter with regard to the public's current view of journalists. The public demands accuracy, understanding that in the real world a whole bunch of leftist journalists will empathize with the enemy sometimes, and amoral journalists will ride shotgun with a lynch mob to get the story.
It's the accuracy problem that is killing main stream media.

Marc, Wolfowitz's "private predictions" were made to a Congressional committee. That's not private, and it helped lead to the deaths of 1500 US troops, the expenditure of several hundred billion dollars, Abu Ghraib, the deaths of something on the order of 100,000 Iraqi civilians and counting, the misappropriation of $9 billion in Iraqi oil revenues, and numerous other minor problems.

Wolfowitz's pre-war public ridicule of then-Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki's retrospectively accurate estimate of the appropriate number of troops for an effective occupation of Iraq was made to and widely reported by the press, and led directly to our inability to secure the country and the weapons now killing and maiming our troops and Iraqi civilians.

Your casual dismissal of those little predictive failures and the damage they've caused speaks volumes about your interests. That the president is incapable of recognizing or caring about, or both, the wholesale fuckups of his underlings seems a bit irrelevant to the discussion other than as an indication that your concerns about the accuracy of the press are limited to issues you perceive as threatening to your particular biases.

Your "five-figure shlubs" however, whose income range I happily share, have tried there damndest to convince the population of the world of a whole serious of unlikely things:
- quagmire and failure in afghanistan
- quagmire and failure in iraq

gee, you forgot
- Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq

it never ceases to amaze me how the right wing consistently redefines "success" and "failure" based on whatever the situation happens to be at the time.

I mean, "national" elections in Afghanistan that took place only in Kabul? You call that success? You define success as allowing Afghan warlords to continue to grow opium in record amounts for export to the United States in order to prevent the reformation of the Northern Alliance bent on overthrowing the the Karzai government for the same reasons they rebelled against the Taliban? That's your idea of success? And last time I checked, we still had troops in Afghanistan holding up the Karzai government, and no coherent plans to withdraw our troops from that nation. I don't know how you define "quagmire", but we're a third of the way to spending as much time in Afghanistan as did the Soviet Union---and there is no end in sight.

As for Iraq---you call that a success? 1500 American troops dead, the overwhelming majority of them killed after "major combat operations" were finished? Tens upon tens of thousand of Iraqis dead? Iraq becoming the new training and recruiting headquarters for insane Islamic terrorists? An insurgency that continues to wreck havoc in the country? An "election" that, as of right now, looks like it could result in a full-scale civil war because a government cannot be formed under the conditions set by Bush and company? An "election" whose turnout was not based on any desire for democracy, but on the orders of a fundamentalist Islamic mullah who told his followers it was their religious duty to vote, and the overwhelming participation of the Kurdish minority whose aspirations are to be autonomous enough to support Kurdish insurgencies in Syria, Iran, and Turkey? This is how you define "success"? And I don't know how you define "quagmire", but right now I do see any plans to get the US out of Iraq (then again, perhaps we shouldn't describe it as a "quagmire" if, as many suspect, the real goal of the invasion of Iraq the "success" was control of middle east oil by permanently stationing American troops in the center of Oil Country.)

Don't get me wrong, I think its nice that Iraq had elections....I just think it would have been much nicer if it looked like those elections would actually lead to and end to Americans and Iraqis dying by the scores sometime in the foreseeable future. That is how I would define "success".

See Marc Siegal above for further edification. Or Sisyphus. Or several others.

other than saying its not accurate, they don't have much to say.

But which point do you dispute?

That the US has blasted innocent civilians to pieces because they came to close to a military convoy?

That the US attacked and shut down the last civilian hospital in Fallujah as a prelude to its all out assault on that city, denying non-combatants injured in that assault any opportunity for medical care. (Let alone the fact that the hospital was shut down because it would have been a source of information on the extent of civilian casualties resulting from the assault... )

That the US, as an occupying power, has dropped bombs in civilian neighborhoods based on the fact that "insurgents" were suspected of being in those neighborhoods?

Weldon. They may appear to you as casual dismissals. They are not casual. I come to different conclusions. That doesn't make me a fool, a traitor, or a neocon. Furthermore, Thomas P.M. Barnett importantly distinguishes between the Saddam takedown and completing the job. Winning the war. Winning the peace.

It's fine to try to second guess the operation of the war, but you are using hindsight to second-guess the necessity for the war by tallying up figures. Stop it. Lots of knowledgeable people all over the world -- even Democrats and French -- felt very, very threatened for what they thought were good reasons.

It's fine to try to second guess the operation of the war, but you are using hindsight to second-guess the necessity for the war by tallying up figures. Stop it. Lots of knowledgeable people all over the world -- even Democrats and French -- felt very, very threatened for what they thought were good reasons.

Steve, I wish you would "stop it." Specifically, claiming that at the time the US actually invaded Iraq, it had pretty much been proven that every veriable assertion establishing that sense of threat was pure bullshit, and that there was absolutely no good reason to suspect that those assertions that had not yet been disproven had any basis in actual fact.

People who were actually paying attention, in other words, knew that there was no threat, and that the inspections process had demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that all of the intelligence estimates were so completely flawed that no action should have been taken until there had been a complete review of how those estimates wound up being so wrong.

People had "reason to feel threatened" in September 2002. By March of 2003, there was enough information available to know that there was no threat --- the only reason that SOME people continued to perceive a threat was that Bushco continued to insist that Saddam did have WMDs.

So please stop playing these games about people feeling threatened, because we both know that by the time we started slaughtering Iraqis, there was absolutely no reason to believe there was any threat.

Are the Bushies at "war" with the Fourth Estate? Is there an insidious plot to weaken the media establishment, to carpet-bomb its credibility like the Saddam regime?

I wouldn't go that far. People forget that every administration tries to neutralize the press. There was much hand-wringing about Clinton circumventing the White House press corps when he started going on Larry King and other talk shows. And much talk of stonewalling over the way his White House handled its various scandals.

I would argue that nothing the White House has done has damaged the media's credibility more than what the profession has done to itself.

At Buzzmachine.com, Jeff Jarvis, quotes New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller: My study of the blog culture is, I readily admit, very cursory and incomplete, but it's striking that there seems to be no end to any argument in your world.

SBW, the post in question was addressed to Marc (hence the "Marc, ..."). I don't always agree with you, but I will testify under oath that when you dismiss something, you do it with a thoroughness that could never be mistaken for casual or disingenuous.

P.S. Interestingly and equally off-topic, you might find this point-counter-point on Iraq interesting.

"interesting" only in the clinical sense. What you linked to was a far right-wing site (Belmont Club) that excepted an (out-of-context) portion of an article from the far-right wing Darmouth Review's account of a debate on the Iraq war.

The pro-war side of the debate, as excepted by Belmont, came down to "killing tens of thousands of Iraqis was justified because the UN did not act when tens of thousands of others were killed in places like Serbia and Rwanda." In fact, the except shown on Belmont made both sides look pretty ridiculous....and in doing so, completely misrepresented the nature of the debate as presented by the original source (the Dartmouth Review.)

perhaps you find such distortions interesting.... hopefully, in the future you will at least provide the link to the full article, rather than an excerpt chosen by a far-right wing website---and note the political biases of the people describing the debate itself.

What did you read? The selection I read excerpted sound arguments on both sides and linked further -- I thought to the source. I didn't follow it. If you have a link to the full text, then don't just posture and rant, for goodness sake, add to transparency by linking to it.

What did you read? The selection I read excerpted sound arguments on both sides and linked further -- I thought to the source. I didn't follow it.

I guess that's the point.

Personally, I think that the arguments presented in the excerpts were among the weakest possible (anti-war: "because it wasn't sanctioned by the UN" vs pro-war: "the UN failed to intervene in Rwanda, Serbia, and Dafur" -- a particularly inapt argument imho, because there although there is a distinct moral imperative to intervene to prevent ongoing mass murder/genocide, in 2003 there was no evidence that intervention in Iraq met that ongoing standard.)

The full piece makes it clear that the anti-war side was pointing out the lack of WMDs or any threat, while the pro-war side was still grasping at the possibility that weapons would still be found....

Not sure if this from Carl Zimmer on neurology and morality will clarify or muddy, but I'll lob it and run.
Excerpts:

"We have people who are talking past each other, thinking the other people are either incredibly dumb or willfully blind to what’s right in front of them...
[Person A] has written in the past about how we should base our moral judgments in part on what he calls "the wisdom of repugnance." In other words, the feeling you get in your bones that something is wrong is a reliable guide to what really is wrong
...[Person B]...suggested that we need to understand that moral intuitions are not automatically moral truths--particularly when they're applied to complicated ethical quandaries about science and technology that our ancestors never had to confront."

Prioritizing "what's true" (regardless of how awful) above "what's right" might be a choice that other cultures have not had the luxury of making.

Also - anthropologists (who are also reporters, albeit for a more temporally and spatially dispersed audience) run into the same quandaries.
As do primatologists...

Certain phrases and words are best avoided in discussions. "The people have a right to know..." is one worth avoiding. "Moral" is another one. If you can't express your idea without using them, you need to work on it.

Decades ago, I wrote an entirely too long paper as part of my degree requirements called "The Oppenheimer Project: Society's Growth Into An Atomic Age"

Part of the foreward read:

Also, many historians and philosophers of science are questioning the assumption by the scientific community that modern science is objective, value-free, and context-free knowledge of the external world.

It specifically examined the "death of nature" as a guiding belief thru the Scientific Revolution.

For like as a man's disposition is never well known till he be crossed, nor Proteus ever changed shapes till he was straitened and held fast; so the passages and variations of nature cannot appear so fully in the liberty of nature as in the trials and vexations of art.

From natural philosophy to Mechanism to Conservation ...

When you wrote: "Prioritizing "what's true" (regardless of how awful) above "what's right" might be a choice that other cultures have not had the luxury of making." I immediately thought of that shift, from Bacon to Kant.

In my epilouge I wrote: "Engineers and scientests should be educated to understand that they possess social and ethical responsibilities for their work. Philosophers should not treat science as the "other", distinct from philosophical norms and ethics. Rather, philosophers should incorporate ehtics into the engineer's and scientist's work world, not as an external body, (i.e. an ethics committee) in order to supervise and direct, but to provide an internal ethical compass for the engineer to use to evaluate and guide his workings."

I dont no where really to begin but the discourse between sbw, p.luk.,weldon, and sisyphus was great; but now for some of my observations(between episodes of Curb your Enthusiasm of course and I duly apologize).
1. The situation presented is a moral and ethical one- that is unto itself. Now, we introduce a reporter/journalist and all of us debate what is the moral/not moral thing to do and/or report. My problem- as I have stated here many times- is we are relying and somewhat ennobling a reporter/journalist to do the moral or proper neutral thing in their observations/actions/reporting-whatever that means or entails. I dont believe that is possible ie the reporter/journalist/person is always going to introduce bias or their morality or their truth into the situation- and add on to that the reward of 'breaking the story'. This leads to #2.
2. Though reporters/journalists may be exposing a war crime or a smaller truth(Abu prison), they may be obscuring a larger truth(Saddam was a mass torturer/murderer and jailer of children in his own right) and trying to introduce their 'unbiasness' (The crimes of the US at Abu prison = crimes of Saddam therefore Iraq is no better off now or forever in the future and therefore the US is just as complicit and immoral) and then add on the typical deconstruction and nuance of the reporters overall view of US policy garnered from their college/newsroom. All of this why trying to maintain an aura of 'objectivity'. I am not saying it cant be done or limited to a certain degree, but todays slew of reporters/journalists seem far far more eager to engage the one angle or thread of the anti-US part of the story(in the name of objectivity of course) than simply to pursue the story as a whole or even a story that rebukes their viewpoint of the story or their newsroom editor...
3. I dont really care that there is bias-really. It is the assumption and moral authority the reporters/journalists confer upon themselves that is most bothersome. And as it happens, the Left has been the fore runner of this for many years while the Right is just now getting involved in the last 15 years or so.
Look, it is no mystery- the majority of reporters fall into the Left...fine...but they claim/seem to claim/act/report to be objective. I find it more refreshing to have both sides reporting the same story from their respective angles...it forces the truth or information to the surface more quickly-like the blogs. Of course it will lead to those favoring their side and mediums...just like now...duh. I read the Nation, The Progresssive(3 s's!- that is how progressive it is), Mother Jones etc. while reading all the stuff on the Right. Same with the online newspapers/magazines..the difference is the Right tells you their truth and bias -with partisanship added- while all the newspapers of the Left wholly deny their truths and bias and partisanship while embracing their false concept of objectivity and moral neutrality.
It-the reporting and informing us cattle- has become tiresome and boring and typical and most important un-informing.
Good Post Anna!

Sisyphus it's called a foreword. Philospophy is a lot of fun. I've had my share as part of my program recently, but when discussing science one is tied to the method. The method is apolitical. Those who think otherwise are not scientists. Political opinion is the antihesis of scientific research. Conservatives don't know that and herein lies the problem when they are in power.

No reporter is hiding Saddam's history by writing about abu Ghraib or some other torture camp. That's a leap of pretzel logic. Nobody would publish an author who did that. The point is when we do it it's worse and undermines the mission. It is a story nonetheless.

I'd argue that when one all of a sudden remembers the gassing in 1987 or whenever it was, and paints it like it was last week that's deceptive reporting. The press didn't do that. The administration did. Same folks different decade.

I dont necessarily think they are 'hiding' the story. The story or reporting becomes a parable of how we are just as bad as the past Saddam regime because a tiny part of the overall picture(idiot American Army personnel at Abu prison and the fight to prove it was done on Prez. Bush's or Rumsfeld's direct orders) instead of the larger picture of that, hey, who cares what was said to get rid of someone like Saddam Hussein. He was Evil, fuck him. Past Presidents may have ignored him or built him up but how is this all W's fault in the 21st century??? Maybe a reporter can do a story on how corrupt a country or an organization like the UN must have become over the years that the only way to convince them to act on their original charter is through lies. What does that say about the US or the UN? Maybe the war was about oil but not oil for us but oil that France and Russia wanted? Are they complicit in any of this? I want that story told. What does that say about the world at large when the only way to convince them that a bad guy is bad is to lie about a known truth ie Saddam was not a nice guy and his time is up and it is time for the world to cut ties with him and take him out.
Thus, we remove ourselves back to the original argument of the journalist and sniper ie Bush went through the scenario just posted. It's all about the morality pre-emption isnt it???

I have a problem with the "we are missing the big picture" when we talk about Abu Ghraib without mentioning Saddam's atrocities stuff. And although context is important, in this case I would suggest that it is not context that is desired, but mitigation.

In Jay's series on "decertification" of the press, one of the things he talks about is "agreed upon facts". I don't think that there is any dispute over the fact that Saddam had killed tens upon tens of thousands of Iraqis to maintain political control, or that he engaged in abominable torture of those whom he felt threatened by. And I don't think that there is any question that radical Islamists affiliated with al Qaeda murdered 3000 Americans in cold-blood on 9-11.

Yet, when the issue of US abuses in Iraq are brought up, there are demands that we also talk about Saddam's history of torture---and when abuses at Guantanamo are mentioned, we are constantly chided to remember 9-11. What purpose, other than "mitigation" of US abuses, is there in reiterating facts that are part of the public psyche in these cases?

IMHO, this demand for "context" is no more valid than demanding that each time we mention Saddam's mass murder and torture, we mention the fact that the US had actively encouraged Shiite and Kurdish communities to rebel against Saddam, and was actively engaged in conspiracies with Saddam's political enemies to overthrow him.

Sometimes, "context" is necessary because "mitigation" is necessary for a proper understanding of a given situation. (see "appendix). But the citation of established facts does not provide any additional context because those facts are established. In general, I would say that demands for "context" information are only valid when the information itself is not an "agreed upon fact" that is part of the public consciousness.

****************

(appendix) I would cite the issue of Iraq's violations of the cease fire agreement by importing "dual use" technologies and materials without permission as a prime example of a situation that demands additional information that provides the proper context. War supporters use these violations as a justification for the war in what, IMHO, is an intellectually dishonest fashion. The US was blocking the importation of chlorine, and as a result Iraq's water supply remained contaminated, and Saddam maintained a legitimate right to defend himself but the US was blocking things like "dual use" aluminum tubes. And, insofar as there is no evidence that the violations that were cited were aimed at pursuing prohibited programs, but were, in fact, being used "legitimately", citation of these violations used as an excuse to invade Iraq without any context is improper.

Further up the comment chain, Steven den Beste made an observation and I replied that that has caused me to attempt to resolve competing principles. I thought about what he wrote, took it to heart, and worked on it -- because my ideas aren't important, sound ideas are.

However, with p.lukasiak -- any rhetorical trick is appropriate, when you have convictions.

He understands that the effect of framing an issue puts the issue into such a perspective that it removes the necessity to face either the argument or the evidence. He can discount a link because the link pointed to a right wing blog.

If that fails, he can avoid the issue as an "evidence producer" -- overwhelming the discussion with volume, whether that generated is germane or not.

If that fails, he can introduce the conventional meme, broad-brush cliché -- the "He lied about WMD" approach.

If that fails, he can put the opponent into a class of people -- neocon, dumb -- that is a class to put down and ignore by definition.

These are extraordinary defenses. Sadly, he cheats himself, not me.

It is good that we live in a democracy, where only 50% of the small number voting are all you need to convince to elect someone. But that, itself, is worrisome, because the voting majority sometimes buys into the foolish -- like the growing McCain-Feingold interpretation of blog support as political contribution. That interpretation isn't about equity, it is about control of argument by other means than the strength of the logic.

Blogs galvanized grassroots political participation (the Dean campaign). Blogs make main stream media more accountable (CBS, ABC, CNN). But the real contribution of blogs to civilization will be their challenge to education. When it becomes evident how ill-prepared people are to carry on discussion, schools will be obliged to equip people with proper tools for thought that make effective discussion possible.

I suppose one could even make comparisons between the scientific method and the journalistic ideal of an objective process, as well as the myth of neutrality in both science and journalism as practiced - the mythological objective press.

But I'll add this (for you, Marc) from the wikipedia site:

Predictions from these theories are tested by experiment. If a prediction turns out to be correct, the theory survives. Any theory which is cogent enough to make predictions can then be tested reproducibly in this way.

As someone (Sisyphus?) [actually, no, it was Steven Den Beste] has noted, "publicity" is essential to the success of any insurgency. This raises the issue of "staged" events, and the ethical equation in the "sniper" story would be quite different if a war crime would not occur absent the presence of a journalist who could provide "publicity."

However, there may be even more subtle, or nuanced, issues involved with the sniper.

like most right wingers, you never get around to actually disputing any of my factual assertions....

First of all I'd be very interested if you could point out anything I have posted here that allows you to assume I'm a "right-winger". My posts were all on topic and making the point that I believed the reporter was actually guilty of a crime in this scenario. You certainly don’t know my party affiliation or political beliefs.

Second, you don't have any "factual assertions", you're just channeling Howard Dean and spouting the standard talking points of your rather obvious party affiliation.

Finally, I've noticed that you seem to drag every thread here, regardless of topic, off into this same area. Irregardless of topic, you eventually manage to get in your same “factual assertions”.

As I said – it’s obviously a waste of keystrokes, nothing I can say will ever change the reality you see.

He understands that the effect of framing an issue puts the issue into such a perspective that it removes the necessity to face either the argument or the evidence. He can discount a link because the link pointed to a right wing blog.

Steve (waters)....

you are trying to "frame" the issue in the way you want to as well.

and, btw, I didn't "discount a link because the link pointed to a right wing blog", I went to the trouble of explaining what was wrong with the link. The point being made was that you will rely on right-wing blogs for accurate and (from your point of view) unbiased information with the (implicit) demand that others accept what appears there as accurate and unbiased.

Well, the world doesn't work that way, I'm afraid---

at the end of your rant about me, you talk about how "good it is that we live in a democracy." I'm surprised you feel that way, because it does not appear that you accept the foundational of democracy (an informed electorate), and instead wish to impose your own limited version of reality on everyone else.

First of all I'd be very interested if you could point out anything I have posted here that allows you to assume I'm a "right-winger".....Second, you don't have any "factual assertions", you're just channeling Howard Dean and spouting the standard talking points of your rather obvious party affiliation."

you know, if I thought it made a difference, I'd go back and show you where you betrayed your political biases in subtle but unmistakable ways.

But since you have confirmed that not only are you a far-right winger ("you're just channelling Howard Dean") but that you are impervious to even the most obvious things when they are in conflict with your ideological biases ("you don't have any 'factual assertions'"; its one thing to suggest that my assertions were false, but only the most ideologically blinded would claim that I made no 'factual assertions'"), I really can't be bothered.

I'd also be interested in any thoughts on how the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle might (philosophically) apply.

first, thanks for the correction on the citation I made.

secondly, although one can never be absolutely certain that the act of observing will alter the observed phenomenon*, I think that in this particular instance (where it is assumed that the reporter has been told what was going to happen, and has every reason to believe that it would happen regardless of whether he observes it or not), I don't think that the issue of whether observation will change the phenomenon really applies.

*philosophically, of course. One assumes that the Uncertainty Principle in its application in its proper context does apply.

To the RH p. luk:
I do not expect nor demand that everytime Abu prison comes up in a story that the press remind us of Saddams crimes. I find it bothersome and suspiciuous that one feels the need to make comparisons between the two situations and to frame them as somehow equal; See! The Americans are just as bad as Saddam! It is the framing I have a problem with.

What I find interesting about Jay's piece is that the reporter in his example could ever feign moral confusion about what had transpired. He crossed the line into the immoral when he sought to observe and report on events he knew would result in immoral acts. At that point he becomes culpable, whether he is enticed to participate, or merely observes even a single murder. The reporter knew what would transpire when he agreed to go along, whether he was consulted in the process or not...at that point he CHOSE to observe murder, and reporting on such acts may, indeed, result in the paying audience tagging the reporter and his company as immoral. They may choose not to, but at what point would the casual observer call it immoral...as the reporter continued to observe killings night after night? Would the threshold be two murders, three, fifteen? I suggest the threshold is the single event, although others may have a higher tolerance for this type of gruesome grab for market share than I do.

Make no mistake, in my previous profession; I killed people, perhaps hundreds over the dozens of missions that I flew. The killing was done to achieve, what in my mind was a just goal, freeing Kuwait, but my participation was not designed specifically to boost readership and sales. Therein lies the difference (in my mind anyway), which allows me to sleep with a clear conscience... I can re-play my missions and not feel guilt. If I were the reporter in the example, there is no way I could free myself from the guilt I would feel.

My advice is keep a moral compass of some kind (not preaching here), or you may find yourself in the downward spiral towards the abyss, caused by the mind bending, and potentially crippling, exercise of wrestling with the philosophical elements of guilt, culpability, and morality. Playing with fire often results in burns.

We need to keep the press from being absorbed into The Media. This means keeping the word press, which is antiquated. But included under its modern umbrella should be all who do the serious work in journalism, regardless of the technology used. The people who will invent the next press in America--and who are doing it now online--continue an experiment at least 250 years old. It has a powerful social history and political legend attached...

The People Formerly Known as the Audience: "You don't own the eyeballs. You don't own the press, which is now divided into pro and amateur zones. You don't control production on the new platform, which isn't one-way. There's a new balance of power between you and us." More...

Migration Point for the Press Tribe: "Like reluctant migrants everywhere, the people in the news tribe have to decide what to take with them. When to leave. Where to land. They have to figure out what is essential to their way of life. They have to ask if what they know is portable." More...

Bloggers vs. Journalists is Over: "Here is one advantage bloggers have in the struggle for reputation-- for the user's trust. They are closer to the transaction where trust gets built up on the Web. There's a big difference between tapping a built-up asset, like the St. Pete Times 'brand,' and creating it from scratch." More...

"Where's the Business Model for News, People?" "It’s remarkable to me how many accomplished producers of those goods the future production of which is in doubt are still at the stage of asking other people, “How are we going to pay our reporters if you guys don’t want to pay for our news?'" More...

National Explainer: A Job for Journalists on the Demand Side of News
This American Life's great mortgage crisis explainer, The Giant Pool of Money, suggests that "information" and "explanation" ought to be reversed in our order of thought. Especially as we contemplate new news systems. More...

The Beast Without a Brain: Why Horse Race Journalism Works for Journalists and Fails Us. "Just so you know, 'the media' has no mind. It cannot make decisions. Which means it does not 'get behind' candidates. It does not decide to oppose your guy… or gal. It is a beast without a brain. Most of the time, it doesn’t know what it’s doing.." More...

They're Not in Your Club but They Are in Your League: Firedoglake at the Libby Trial: "I’m just advising Newsroom Joe and Jill: make room for FDL in your own ideas about what’s coming on, news-wise. Don’t let your own formula (blog=opinion) fake you out. A conspiracy of the like minded to find out what happened when the national news media isn’t inclined to tell us might be way more practical than you think." More...

Twilight of the Curmudgeon Class: "We’re at the twilight of the curmudgeon class in newsrooms and J-schools. (Though they can still do a lot of damage.) You know they’re giving up when they no longer bother to inform themselves about what they themselves say is happening." More...

Getting the Politics of the Press Right: Walter Pincus Rips into Newsroom Neutrality "The important thing is to show integrity-- not to be a neuter, politically. And having good facts that hold up is a bigger advantage than claiming to reflect all sides equally well." More...

A Most Useful Definition of Citizen Journalism "It's mine, but it should be yours. Can we take the quote marks off now? Can we remove the 'so-called' from in front? With video!." More...

The Master Narrative in Journalism: "Were 'winning' to somehow be removed or retired as the operating system for news, campaign reporting would immediately become harder to do, not because there would be no news, but rather no common, repeatable instructions for deciding what is a key development in the story, a turning point, a surprise, a trend. Master narratives are thus harder to alter than they are to apprehend. For how do you keep the story running while a switch is made?" More...

He Said, She Said Journalism: Lame Formula in the Land of the Active User "Any good blogger, competing journalist or alert press critic can spot and publicize false balance and the lame acceptance of fact-free spin. Do users really want to be left helpless in sorting out who's faking it more? The he said, she said form says they do, but I say decline has set in." More...

Users-Know-More-than-We-Do Journalism: "It's a "put up or shut up" moment for open source methods in public interest reporting. Can we take good ideas like... distributed knowledge, social networks, collaborative editing, the wisdom of crowds, citizen journalism, pro-am reporting... and put them to work to break news?" More...

Introducing NewAssignment.Net: "Enterprise reporting goes pro-am. Assignments are open sourced. They begin online. Reporters working with smart users and blogging editors get the story the pack wouldn't, couldn't or didn't." More...

What I Learned from Assignment Zero "Here are my coordinates for the territory we need to be searching. I got them from doing a distributed trend story with Wired.com and thinking through the results." More...

If Bloggers Had No Ethics Blogging Would Have Failed, But it Didn't. So Let's Get a Clue: "Those in journalism who want to bring ethics to blogging ought to start with why people trust (some) bloggers, not with an ethics template made for a prior platform operating as a closed system in a one-to-many world." More...

The View From Nowhere: "Occupy the reasonable middle between two markers for 'vocal critic,' and critics look ridiculous charging you with bias. Their symmetrical existence feels like proof of an underlying hysteria. Their mutually incompatible charges seem to cancel each other out. The minute evidence they marshall even shows a touch of fanaticism." More...

Rollback: "This White House doesn't settle for managing the news--what used to be called 'feeding the beast'--because there is a larger aim: to roll back the press as a player within the executive branch, to make it less important in running the White House and governing the country." More...

Retreat from Empiricism: On Ron Suskind's Scoop: ""Realist, a classic term in foreign policy debates, and reality-based, which is not a classic term but more of an instant classic, are different ideas. We shouldn't fuzz them up. The press is capable of doing that because it never came to terms with what Suskind reported in 2004." More...

Karl Rove and the Religion of the Washington Press: "Savviness--that quality of being shrewd, practical, well-informed, perceptive, ironic, 'with it,' and unsentimental in all things political--is, in a sense, their professional religion. They make a cult of it. And it was this cult that Karl Rove understood and exploited for political gain." More...

Journalism Is Itself a Religion: "We're headed, I think, for schism, tumult and divide as the religion of the American press meets the upheavals in global politics and public media that are well underway. Changing around us are the terms on which authority can be established by journalists. The Net is opening things up, shifting the power to publish around. Consumers are becoming producers, readers can be writers." More...

News Turns from a Lecture to a Conversation: "Some of the pressure the blogs are putting on journalists shows up, then, in the demand for "news as conversation," more of a back-and-forth, less of a pronouncement. This is an idea with long roots in academic journalism that suddenly (as in this year) jumped the track to become part of the news industry's internal dialogue." More...

Two Washington Posts May Be Better Than One: "They're not equals, but Washington and Arlington have their own spheres. Over the newspaper and reporting beats Len Downie is king. Over the website Jim Brady is sovereign. Over the userï¿½s experience no one has total control. There's tension because there's supposed to be tension." More...

Laying the Newspaper Gently Down to Die: "An industry that won't move until it is certain of days as good as its golden past is effectively dead, from a strategic point of view. Besides, there is an alternative if you don't have the faith or will or courage needed to accept reality and deal. The alternative is to drive the property to a profitable demise." More...

Grokking Woodward: "Woodward and Bernstein of 1972-74 didn't have such access, and this probably influenced--for the better--their view of what Nixon and his men were capable of. Watergate wasn't broken by reporters who had entree to the inner corridors of power. It was two guys on the Metro Desk." More...

Maybe Media Bias Has Become a Dumb Debate: "This here is a post for practically everyone in the game of seizing on media bias and denouncing it, which is part of our popular culture, and of course a loud part of our politics. And this is especially for the 'we're fair and balanced, you're not' crowd, wherever I may have located you." More...

Bill O'Reilly and the Paranoid Style in News: "O'Reilly feeds off his own resentments--the establishment sneering at Inside Edition--and like Howard Beale, the 'mad prophet of the airwaves,' his resentments are enlarged by the medium into public grievances among a mass of Americans unfairly denied voice." More...

Thoughts on the Killing of a Young Correspondent: "Among foreign correspondents, there is a phrase: 'parachuting in.' That's when a reporter drops into foreign territory during an emergency, without much preparation, staying only as long as the story remains big. The high profile people who might parachute in are called Bigfoots in the jargon of network news. The problem with being a Bigfoot, of course, is that it's hard to walk in other people's shoes." More...

The News From Iraq is Not Too Negative. But it is Too Narrow: "The bias charges are getting more serious lately as the stakes rise in Iraq and the election. But there is something lacking in press coverage, and it may be time for wise journalists to assess it. The re-building story has gone missing. And without it, how can we judge the job Bush is doing?." More...

The Abyss of Observation Alone. "There are hidden moral hazards in the ethic of neutral observation and the belief in a professional 'role' that transcends other loyalties. I think there is an abyss to observation alone. And I feel it has something to do with why more people don't trust journalists. They don't trust that abyss." More...

"Find Some New Information and Put it Into Your Post." Standards for Pro-Am Journalism at OffTheBus: "Opinion based on information 'everyone' has is less valuable than opinion journalism based on information that you dug up, originated, or pieced together. So it’s not important to us that contributors keep opinion out. What’s important is that they put new information in. More...

Out in the Great Wide Open: Maybe you heard about the implosion of Wide Open, a political blog started by the Cleveland Plain Dealer with four "outside" voices brought in from the ranks of Ohio bloggers: two left, two right. Twelve points you may not have seen elsewhere." More...

Some Bloggers Meet the Bosses From Big Media: "What capacity for product development do news organizations show? Zip. How are they on nurturing innovation? Terrible. Is there an entreprenurial spirit in newsrooms? No. Do smart young people ever come in and overturn everything? Never." More...

Notes and Comment on BlogHer 2005 "I think the happiest conference goers at BlogHer were probably the newbies, people who want to start blogging or just did. They got a lot of good information and advice. Some of the best information was actually dispensed in response to the fears provoked by blogging, which shouldnï¿½t be avoided, the sages said, but examined, turned around, defused, and creatively shrunk.." More...

Top Ten List: What's Radical About the Weblog Form in Journalism? "The weblog comes out of the gift economy, whereas most of today's journalism comes out of the market economy." More...

A Second Top Ten List: What's Conservative About the Weblog Form in Journalism? "The quality of any weblog in journalism depends greatly on its fidelity to age old newsroom commandments like check facts, check links, spell things correctly, be accurate, be timely, quote fairly." More...

Blogging is About Making and Changing Minds: "Sure, weblogs are good for making statements, big and small. But they also force re-statement. Yes, they're opinion forming. But they are equally good at unforming opinion, breaking it down, stretching it out." More...

The Weblog: An Extremely Democratic Form in Journalism "It's pirate radio, legalized; it's public access coming closer to life. Inside the borders of Blogistan (a real place with all the problems of a real place) we're closer to a vision of 'producer democracy' than we are to any of the consumerist views that long ago took hold in the mass media, including much of the journalism presented on that platform." More...

No One Owns Journalism: "And Big Media doesn't entirely own the press, because if it did then the First Amendment, which mentions the press, would belong to Big Media. And it doesn't. These things were always true. The weblog doesn't change them. It just opens up an outlet to the sea. Which in turn extends 'the press' to the desk in the bedroom of the suburban mom, where she blogs at night." More...

Brain Food for BloggerCon: Journalism and Weblogging in Their Corrected Fullness "Blogging is one universe. Its standard unit is the post, its strengths are the link and the low costs of entry, which means lots of voices. Jounalism is another universe. Its standard unit is "the story." Its strengths are in reporting, verification and access-- as in getting your calls returned." More...

Dispatches From the Un-Journalists: "Journalists think good information leads to opinion and argument. It's a logical sequence. Bloggers think that good argument and strong opinion cause people to seek information, an equally logical sequence. What do the bloggers bring to this? My short answer to the press is: everything you have removed."More...

Political Jihad and the American Blog: Chris Satullo Raises the Stakes "Journalists, you can stop worrying about bloggers 'replacing' the traditional news media. We're grist for their mill, says Satullo, a mill that doesn't run without us. Bloggers consume and extend the shelf life of our reporting, and they scrutinize it at a new level of intensity.."More...

Raze Spin Alley, That Strange Creation of the Press: "Spin Alley, an invention of the American press and politicos, shows that the system we have is in certain ways a partnership between the press and insiders in politics. They come together to mount the ritual. An intelligent nation is entitled to ask if the partners are engaged in public service when they bring to life their invention... Alternative thesis: they are in a pact of mutual convenience that serves no intelligible public good." More...

Horse Race Now! Horse Race Tomorrow! Horse Race Forever!: "How is it you know you're the press? Because you have a pass that says PRESS, and people open the gate. The locker room doors admit you. The story must be inside that gate; that's why they give us credentials. We get closer. We tell the fans what's going on. And if this was your logic, Bill James tried to bust it. Fellahs, said he to the baseball press, you have to realize that you are the gate." More...

Psst.... The Press is a Player: "The answer, I think, involves an open secret in political journalism that has been recognized for at least 20 years. But it is never dealt with, probably because the costs of facing it head on seem larger than the light tax on honesty any open secret demands. The secret is this: pssst... the press is a player in the campaign. And even though it knows this, as everyone knows it, the professional code of the journalist contains no instructions in what the press could or should be playing for?" More...

Die, Strategy News: "I think it's a bankrupt form. It serves no clear purpose, has no sensible rationale. The journalists who offer us strategy news do not know what public service they are providing, why they are providing it, for whom it is intended, or how we are supposed to use this strange variety of news."More...

He Said, She Said, We Said: "When journalists avoid drawing open conclusions, they are more vulnerable to charges of covert bias, of having a concealed agenda, of not being up front about their perspective, of unfairly building a case (for, against) while pretending only to report 'what happened.'" More...

If Religion Writers Rode the Campaign Bus: "Maybe irony, backstage peaking and "de-mystify the process" only get you so far, and past that point they explain nothing. Puzzling through the convention story, because I'm heading right into it myself, made me to realize that journalism's contempt for ritual was deeply involved here. Ritual is newsless; therefore it must be meaningless. But is that really true?."More...

Convention Coverage is a Failed Regime and Bloggers Have Their Credentials: "No one knows what a political convention actually is, anymore, or why it takes 15,000 people to report on it. Two successive regimes for making sense of the event have collapsed; a third has not emerged. That's a good starting point for the webloggers credentialed in Boston. No investment in the old regime and its ironizing." More...

Philip Gourevitch: Campaign Reporting as Foreign Beat: "'A presidential election is a like a gigantic moving television show,' he said. It is the extreme opposite of an overlooked event. The show takes place inside a bubble, which is a security perimeter overseen by the Secret Service. If you go outside the bubble for any reason, you become a security risk until you are screened again by hand."More...

What Time is it in Political Journalism? "Adam Gopnik argued ten years ago that the press did not know who it was within politics, or what it stood for. There was a vacuum in journalism where political argument and imagination should be. Now there are signs that this absence of thought is ending." More...

Off the Grid Journalism: “The assignment was straightforward enough,” writes Marjie Lundstrom of the Sacramento Bee, “talk to people.” When a writer dissents from it or departs from it, the master narrative is a very real thing. Here are two examples: one from politics, one from music. More...

Questions and Answers About PressThink "The Web is good for many opposite things. For quick hitting information. For clicking across a field. For talk and interaction. It's also a depth finder, a memory device, a library, an editor. Not to use a weblog for extended analysis (because most users won't pick that option) is Web dumb but media smart. What's strange is that I try to write short, snappy things, but they turn into long ones." More...